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EUROPE 

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 



EUROPE 

IN THE MIDDLE AGES 



BY 



IERNE L. PLUNKET 

M.A. Oxon. 

AUTHOR OF 'THE FALL OF THE OLD ORDER', 'ISABEL OF CASTILE '. ETC 



OXFORD 

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 

1922 




^c 



OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen 

New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town 

Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai 

HUMPHREY MILFORD 
Publisher to the University 

^ V "2- V S" V 



Printed in England 



PREFACE 

The history of Mediaeval Europe is so vast a subject 
that the attempt to deal with it in a small compass must 
entail either severe compression or what may appear at 
first sight reckless omission. 

The path of compression has been trodden many times, 
as in J. H. Robinson's Introduction to the History of 
Western Europe, or in such series as the ' Periods of 
European History' published by Messrs. Rivingtons for 
students, or text-books of European History published 
by the Clarendon Press and Messrs. Methuen. 

To the authors of all these I should like to express my 
indebtedness both for facts and perspective, as to Mr. H. W. 
Davis for his admirable summary of the mediaeval out- 
look in the Home University Library series ; but in spite 
of so many authorities covering the same ground, I 
venture to claim for the present book a pioneer path of 
'omission' ; it may be reckless but yet, I believe, justifiable. 

It has been my object not so much to supply students 
with facts as to make Mediaeval Europe live, for the many 
who, knowing nothing of her history, would like to know 
a little, in the lives of her principal heroes and villains, as 
well as in the tendencies of her classes, and in the beHefs 
and prejudices of her thinkers. This task I have found 
even more difficult than I had expected, for limits of space 
have insisted on the omission of many events and names 
I would have wished to include. These I have sacrificed 
to the hope of creating reality and arousing interest, and 
if I have in any way succeeded I should like to pay my 
thanks first of all to Mr. Henry Osborn Taylor for his two 
volumes of The Mediaeval Mind that have been my chief 
inspiration, and then to the many authors whose names 
and books I give elsewhere, and whose researches have 
enabled me to tell my tale. 

I ERNE L. PLUNKET. 



CONTENTS 



I. The Greatness of Rome ' . 

II. The Decline of Rome . 

III. The Dawn of Christianity . 

IV. Constantine the Great . 
V. The Invasions of the Barbarians 

VI. The Rise of the Franks 

VII. Mahomet .... 

VIII. Charlemagne 

IX. The Invasions of the Northmen 

X. Feudalism and Monasticism 

XI. The Investiture Question . 

XII. The Early Crusades . 

XIII. The Making of France 

XIV. Empire and Papacy 

XV. Learning and Ecclesiastical Organiza 
tion in the Middle Ages . 

XVI. The Faith of the Middle Ages 

XVII. France under Two Strong Kings 

XVIII. The Hundred Years' War . 

XIX. Spain in the Middle Ages . 



Contents 



vn 



XX. Central and Northern Europe in the 
Later Middle Ages . 

XXI. Italy in the Later Middle Ages . 

XXII. Part I : The Fall of the Greek Empire 

Part II : Voyage and Discovery . 

XXIII. The Renaissance .... 

Some Authorities on Mediaeval 
History 

Chronological Summary, 476-1494 

Mediaeval Genealogies . . 

Index . . . 



276 
297 

3 2 7 
337 
346 

365 
368 

375 
385 



MAPS 



The Roman Empire in the Time of Constantine 
the Great 

The Empire of Charlemagne 

France in the Reign of Henry II 

The Treaty of Bretigni 

France in 1429 

The Spanish Kingdoms, 1263-1492 . 

North-East Europe in the Middle Ages 

Italy in the Later Middle Ages . 

The Near East in the Middle Ages . 



28 

80 

161 

246 

2 54 
260 

287 

298 

328 



THE GREATNESS OF ROME 

'Ave, Roma Immortalis J ", 'Hail, Immortal Rome!' This 
cry, breaking from the lips of a race that had carried the 
imperial eagles from the northern shores of Europe to Asia and 
Africa, was no mere patriotic catchword. It was the expression 
of a belief that, though humanity must die and personal ambitions 
fade away, yet Rome herself was eternal and unconquerable, 
and what was wrought in her name would outlast the ages. 

In the modern world it is sometimes necessary to remind 
people of their citizenship, but the Roman never forgot the 
greatness of his inheritance. When St. Paul, bound with 
thongs and condemned to be scourged, declared, ' I am Roman 
born,' the Captain of the Guard, who had only gained his 
citizenship by paying a large sum of money, was afraid of the 
prisoner on whom he had laid hands without a trial. 

To be a Roman, however apparently poor and defenceless, 
was to walk the earth protected by a shield that none might set 
aside save at great peril. Not to be a Roman, however rich 
and of high standing, was to pass in Roman eyes as a 'barbarian ', 
a creature of altogether inferior quality and repute. 

' Be it thine, O Roman,' says Virgil, the greatest of Latin 
poets, ' to govern the nations with thy imperial rule ' : and such 
indeed was felt by Romans to be the destiny of their race. 

Stretching on the west through Spain and Gaul to the 
Atlantic, that vast ' Sea of Darkness ' beyond which according 
to popular belief the earth dropped suddenly into nothingness, 
the outposts of the Empire in the east looked across the plains 
of Mesopotamia towards Persia and the kingdoms of central 
Asia. Babylon ' the Wondrous ', Syria, and Palestine with its 



2 The Greatness of Rome 

turbulent Jewishpopulation, Egypt, the Kingdom of the Pharaohs 
long ere Romulus the City-builder slew his brother, Carthage, 
the Queen of Mediterranean commerce, all were now Roman 
provinces, their lustre dimmed by a glory greater than they 
had ever known. 

The Mediterranean, once the battle-ground of rival Powers, 
had become an imperial lake, the high road of the grain ships 
that sailed perpetually from Spain and Egypt to feed the central 
market of the world ; for Rome, like England to-day, was quite 
unable to satisfy her population from home cornfields. The 
fleets that brought the necessaries of life convoyed also shiploads 
of oriental luxuries, silks, jewels, and perfumes, transported 
from Ceylon and India in trading-sloops to the shores of the Red 
Sea, and thence by caravans of camels to the port of Alexandria. 

Other trade routes than the Mediterranean were the vast 
network of roads that, like the threads of a spider's web, kept 
every part of the Empire, however remote, in touch with the 
centre from which their common fate was spun. At intervals of 
six miles were ' post-houses ', provided each with forty or more 
horses, that imperial messengers, speeding to or from the 
capital with important news, might dismount and mount again at 
the different stages, hastening on their way with undiminished 
speed. 

How firm and well made were their roads we know to-day, 
when, after the lapse of nearly nineteen centuries of traffic, we 
use and praise them still. They hold in their strong foundations 
one secret of their maker's greatness, that the Roman brought 
to his handiwork the thoroughness inspired by a vision not 
merely of something that should last a few years or even his 
lifetime, but that should endure like the city he believed eternal. 

It was the boast of Augustus, 27 b.c.-a.d. 14, the first of the 
Roman Emperors, that he had found his capital built of brick and 
had left it marble ; and his tradition as an architect passed to his 
successors. There are few parts of what was once the Roman 
Empire that possess no trace to-day of massive aqueduct -or 
Forum, of public baths or stately colonnades. In Rome itself, 
the Colosseum, the scene of many a martyr's death and gladiator's 



Roman Trade Routes 3 

struggle ; elsewhere, as at Nimes in southern France, a provincial 
amphitheatre ; the aqueduct of Segovia in Spain, the baths in 
England that have made and named a town ; the walls that mark 
the outposts of empire — all are the witnesses of a genius that 
dared to plan greatly, nor spared expense or labour in carrying 
out its designs. 

Those who have visited the Border Country between England 
and Scotland know the Emperor Hadrian's wall, twenty feet 
high by seven feet broad, constructed to keep out the fierce Picts 
and Scots from this the most northern of his possessions. Those 
of the enemy that scaled the top would find themselves faced by 
a ditch and further wall, bristling with spears ; while the legions 
flashed their summons for -reinforcements from guardhouse to 
guardhouse along the seventy miles of massive barrier. All that 
human labour could do had made the position impregnable. 

A scheme of fortifications was also attempted in central 
Europe along the lines of the Rhine and Danube. These rivers 
provided the third of the imperial trade routes, and it is well to 
remember them in this connexion, for their importance as high- 
ways lasted right through Roman and mediaeval into modem 
times. Railways have altered the face of Europe : they have 
cut through her waste places and turned them into thriving 
centres of industry : they have looped up her mines and ports 
and tunnelled her mountains : there is hardly a corner of any 
land where they have not penetrated ; and the change they have 
made is so vast that it is often difficult to imagine the world before 
their invention. In Roman times, in neighbourhoods where the 
sea was remote and road traffic slow and inconvenient, there only 
remained the earliest of all means of transport, the rivers. The 
Rhine and Danube, one flowing north-west, the other south-east, 
both neither too swift nor too sluggish for navigation, were the 
natural main high roads of central Europe : they were also an 
obvious barrier between the Empire and barbarian tribes. 

To connect the Rhine and Danube at their sources by 
a massive wall, to establish forts with strong garrisons at every 
point where these rivers could be easily forded, such were the 
precautions by which wise Emperors planned to shut in Rome's 



4 The Greatness of Rome 

civilization, and to keep out all who would lay violent hands 
upon it. 

The Emperor Augustus left a warning to his successors that 
they should be content with these natural boundaries, lest in 
pushing forward to increase their territory they should in reality 
weaken their position. It is easy to agree with his views centuries 
afterwards, when we know that the defences of the Empire, 
pushed ever forward, snapped at the finish like an elastic band ; 
but the average Roman of imperial days believed his nation 
equal to any strain. 

It was a boast of the army that ' Roman banners never retreat '. 
If then a tribe of barbarians were to succeed in fording the Danube 
and in surprising some outpost fort, the legions sent to punish 
them would clamour not merely to exact vengeance and return 
home, but to conquer and add the territory to the Empire. In 
the case of swamps or forest land the clamour might be checked; 
but where there was pasturage or good agricultural soil, it would 
be almost irresistible. Emigrants from crowded Italy would 
demand leave to form a colony, traders would hasten in their 
footsteps, and soon another responsibility of land and lives, 
perhaps with no natural protection of river, sea, or mountains, 
would be added to Rome's burden of government. Such was 
the fertile province of Dacia, north of the Danube, a notable 
gain in territory, but yet a future source of weakness. 

At the head of the Empire stood the Emperor, 'Caesar 
Augustus ', the commander-in-chief of the army, the supreme 
authority in the state, the fountain of justice, a god before whose 
altar every loyal Roman must burn incense and bow the knee in 
reverence. 

It was a great change from the old days, when Rome was 
a republic, and her Senate, or council of leading citizens, had 
been responsible to the rest of the people for their good or bad 
government. The historian Tacitus, looking back from imperial 
days with a sigh of regret, says that in that happy age man 
could speak what was in his mind without fear of his neighbours, 
and draws the contrast with his own time when the Emperor's 
spies wormed their way into house and tavern, paid to betray 



Government of the Roman Empire 5 

those about them to prison or death for some chance word or 
incautious action. Yet Rome by her conquests had brought on 
herself the tyranny of the Empire. 

It is comparatively easy to rule a small city well, where fraud 
and self-seeking can be quickly detected ; but when Rome 
began to extend her boundaries and to employ more people in 
the work of government, unscrupulous politicians appeared. 
These built up private fortunes during their term of office : they 
became senators, and the Senate ceased to represent the will of 
the people and began to govern in the interests of a small 
group of wealthy men. Members of their families became 
governors of provinces, first in Italy, and then as conquests 
continued, across the mountains in Gaul and Spain, and beyond 
the seas in Egypt and Asia Minor. Except in name, senators 
and governors ceased to be simple citizens and lived as princes, 
with officials and servants ready to carry out their slightest 
wish. 

Perhaps it may seem odd that the Roman people, once so fond 
of liberty that they had driven into exile the kings who oppressed 
them, should afterwards let themselves be bullied or neglected 
by a hundred petty tyrants ; but in truth the people had 
changed even more than the class of ' patricians ' to whom they 
found themselves in bondage. 

No longer pure Roman or Latin, but through conquest and 
intermarriage of every race from the stalwart Teuton to the 
supple Oriental or swarthy Egyptian, few amongst the men and 
women crowding the streets of Rome remembered or reverenced 
the traditions of her early days. Rome stood for military glory, 
luxury, culture, at her best for even-handed justice, but no longer 
for an ideal of liberty. If national pride was satisfied, and 
adequate food and amusement provided, the Roman populace 
was content to be ruled from above and to hail rival senators as 
masters, according to the extent of their promises and success. 
A failure to fulfil such promises, resulting in a lost campaign or 
a dearth of corn, would throw the military tyrant of the moment 
from his pedestal, but only to set up another in his place. 

It was an easy transition from the rule of a corrupt Senate to 



6 The Greatness of Rome 

that of an autocrat. ' Better one tyrant than many ' was the 
attitude of mind of the average citizen towards Octavius Caesar, 
when under the title of Augustus he gathered to himself the 
supreme command over army and state and so became the 
first of the Emperors. Had he been a tactless man and shouted 
his triumph to the Seven Hills he would probably have fallen a 
victim to an assassin's knife ; but he skilfully disguised his 
authority and posed as being only the first magistrate of |he 
state. 

Under his guiding hand the Senate was reformed, and 
its outward dignity rather increased than shorn. Augustus 
could issue his own ' edicts ' or commands independently of the 
Senate's consent ; but he more frequently preferred to lay his 
measures before it, and to let them reach the public as a 
senatorial decree. In this he ran no risk, for the senators, 
impressive figures in the eyes of the ordinary citizen, were 
really puppets of his creation. At any minute he could cast 
them away. 

His fellow magistrates were equally at his mercy, for in his hands 
alone rested the supreme military command, the imperium, 
from which the title of imperator, or 'emperor', was derived. 
At first he accepted the office only for ten years, but at the end 
of that time, resigning it to a submissive Senate, he received it 
again amid shouts of popular joy. The tyranny of Augustus 
had proved a blessing. 

Instead of corps of troops raised here and there in different 
provinces by governors at war with one another, and thus 
divided in their allegiance, there had begun to develop a disci- 
plined army, whose 'legions' were enrolled, paid, and dismissed 
in the name of the all-powerful Caesar, and who therefore 
obeyed his commands rather than those of their immediate 
captains. 

The same system of centring all authority in one absolute 
ruler was followed in the civil government. Governors of 
provinces, once petty rulers, became merely servants of the state. 
Caesar sent them from Rome : he appointed the officials under 
them : he paid them their salaries : and to him they must give an 



Government of the Roman Empire 7 

account of their stewardship. ' If thou let this man go thou art 
not Caesar's friend.' Such was the threat that induced Pontius 
Pilate, Governor of Judea in the reign of Tiberius, to condemn 
to death a man he knew to be innocent of crime. 

This is but one of many stories that show the dread of the 
Emperor's name in Rome's far-distant provinces. Governors, 
military commanders, judges, tax-collectors, all the vast army ot 
officials who bore the responsibility of government on their 
shoulders, had an ultimate appeal from their decisions to 
Caesar, and were exalted by his smile or trembled at his frown. 

It is not a modern notion of good government, this complete 
power vested in one man, but Rome nearly two thousand years 
ago was content that a master should rule her, so long as 
he would guarantee prosperity and peace at home. This under 
the early Caesars was at least secured. 

Two fleets patrolled the Mediterranean, but their vigilance was 
not needed, save for an occasional brush with pirates. Naught 
but storms disturbed her waters. The legions on the frontiers, 
whether in Syria or Egypt, or along the Rhine and Danube, kept 
the barbarians at bay until Romans ceased to think of war as a 
trade to which every man might one day be called. It was 
a profession left to the few, the ' many ' content to pay the taxes 
required by the state and to devote themselves to a civilian's life. 

To one would fall the management of a large estate, another 
would stand for election to a government office, a third would 
become a lawyer or a judge. Others would keep shops or 
taverns or work as hired labourers, while below these again 
would be the class of slaves, whether prisoners of war sold in the 
market-place or citizens deprived of their freedom for crime 
or debt. 

In Rome itself was a large population, living in uncomfortable 
lodging-houses very like the slum tenements of a modern city. 
Some of the inhabitants would be engaged in casual labour, some 
idle ; but when the Empire was at its zenith lavish gifts of corn 
from the government stood between this otherwise destitute 
population and starvation. It crowded the streets to see 
Caesar pass, threw flowers on his chariot, and hailed him 



8 The Greatness of Rome 

as Emperor and God, and in return he bestowed on it food and 
amusements. 

The huge amphitheatres ot Rome and her provinces were 
built to satisfy the public desire for pageantry and sport ; and, 
because life was held cheap, and for all his boasted civilization 
the Roman was often a savage at heart, he would spend his 
holidays watching the despised sect of Christians thrown to the 
lions, or hired gladiators fall in mortal struggle. £ We, about to 
die, salute thee.' With these words the victims of an emperor's 
lust of bloodshed bent the knee before the imperial throne, and 
at Caesar's nod passed to slay or be slain. The emperor's 
sceptre did not bring mercy, but order, justice, and prosperity 
above the ordinary standard of the age. 



II 

THE DECLINE OF ROME 

The years of Rome's greatness seemed to her sons an age of 
gold, but even at the height of her prosperity there were traces 
of the evils that brought about her downfall. An autocracy, that 
is, the rule of one man, might be a perfect form of government 
were the autocrat not a man but a god, thus combining super- 
human .goodness and understanding with absolute power. 
Unfortunately, Roman emperors were representatives of human 
nature in all its phases. Some, like Augustus, were great rulers ; 
others, though good men, incompetent in the management of 
public affairs ; whilst not a few led evil lives and regarded their 
office as a means of gratifying their own desires. 

The Emperor Nero (54-68), for instance, was cruel and profli- 
gate, guilty of the murder of his half-brother, mother, and wife, 
and also of the deaths of numberless senators and citizens whose 
wealth he coveted. Because he was an absolute ruler his corrupt 
officials were able to bribe and oppress his subjects as they 
wished until he was fortunately assassinated. He was the last of 
his line, the famous House of Julius to which Augustus had 
belonged, and the period that followed his death was known as 
' the year of the four Emperors ', because during that time no 
less than four rivals claimed and struggled for the coveted 
honour. 

Nominally, the right ot election lay with the Senate, but the 
final champion, Vespasian (69-79), was n °t even a Roman nor an 
aristocrat, but a soldier from the provinces. He had climbed the 
ladder of fame by sheer endurance and his power of managing 
others, and his accession was a triumph not for the Senate but 
the legions who had supported him and who now learned their 



io The Decline of Rome 

power. Henceforward it would be the soldier with his naked 
sword who could make and unmake emperors, and especially the 
Praetorian Guard whose right it was to maintain order in Rome. 

The gradual recognition of this idea had a disastrous effect on 
the government of the Empire. Too often the successful general 
of a campaign on the frontier would remember Vespasian and 
become obsessed with the thought that he also might be a 
Caesar. Led by ambition he would hold out to his legions hopes 
of the rewards they would receive were he crowned in Rome, 
and some sort of bargain would be struck, lowering the tone of 
the army by corrupting its loyalty and making its soldiers 
insolent and grasping. 

The Senate attempted to deal with this difficulty ot the 
succession by passing a law that every Emperor should, during 
his lifetime, name his successor, and that the latter should at once 
be hailed as Caesar, take a secondary share in the government, 
and have his effigy printed on coins. In this way he would 
become known to the whole Roman world, and when the 
Emperor died would at once be acknowledged in his place. 
Thus the Romans hoped to establish the theory that England 
expresses to-day in the phrase ' The King never dies \ 

Though to a certain extent successful in their efforts to avoid 
civil war, they failed to arrest other evils that were undermining 
the prosperity of the government. One of these was the 
imperial expenditure. It was only natural that the Emperor 
should assume a magnificence and liberality in excess of his 
wealthiest subjects, but in addition he found it necessary to buy 
the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and to keep the Roman 
populace satisfied in its demands for free corn and expensive 
amusements. 

The standard of luxury had grown, and Romans no longer 
admired, except in books, the simple life of their forefathers. 
Instead the fashionable ideal was that of the East they had 
enslaved, and the Emperor was gradually shut off from the mass 
of his subjects by a host of court officials who thronged his ante- 
chambers and exacted heavy bribes for admission. In this 
unhealthy atmosphere suspicion and plots grew apace like weeds, 



The Roman Villa n 

and money dripped through the imperial fingers as through a 
sieve, now into the pockets of one favourite, now of another. 

' I have lost a day,' was said by the Emperor Titus (a. d. 79-81), 
whenever twenty-four hours had passed without his having made 
some valuable present to those about him. His courtiers were 
ready to fall on their knees and hail him for his liberality as 
' Darling of the human race ' ; but he only reigned for two years. 
Had he lived to exhaust his treasury it is probable that the 
greedy throng would have passed a different verdict. 

Extravagance is as catching as the plague, and the Roman 
aristocracy did not fail to copy the imperial example. Just as 
the Emperor was surrounded by a court, so every noble oi 
importance had his following of 'clients' who would wait sub- 
missively on his doorstep in the morning and attend him when 
he walked abroad to the Forum or the Public Baths. Some 
would be idle gentlemen, the penniless younger sons of noble 
houses, others professional poets ready to write flattering verses 
to order, others again famous gladiators whose long death-roll of 
victims had made them as popular in Rome as a champion tennis- 
player or footballer in England to-day. All were united in the 
one hope of gaining something from their patron, perhaps a gift 
of money, or his influence to secure them a coveted office, at the 
least an invitation to a banquet or feast. 

The class of senators to which most of these aristocrats 
belonged had grown steadily richer as the years of empire 
increased, building up immense landed properties something like 
the feudal estates of a later date. These ' villas ', as they were 
called, were miniature kingdoms over which their owners had 
secured absolute power. Their affairs were administered by an 
agent, probably a favoured slave who had gained his freedom, 
assisted by a small army of officials. The principal subjects of 
the landlord would be the small proprietors of farms who paid a 
rent or did various services in return for their houses, while below 
these again w^ould be a larger number of actual slaves, employed 
as household servants, bakers, shoe-makers, shepherds, &c. 

The most striking thing about the Roman 'villa' was that it 
was absolutely self-contained. All that was needed for the life 



i2 The Decline of Rome 

of its inhabitants, whether food or clothing, could be grown and 
manufactured on the estate. The crimes that were committed 
there would be judged by the master or his agent, and from the 
former's decision there would be little hope of appeal. Where 
the proprietor was harsh or selfish, miserable indeed was the 
condition of those condemned to live on his ' villa '. 

The income of the average senator in the fourth century a. d. 
was about £60,000, a very large sum when money was not 
as plentiful as it is to-day. Aurelius Symmachus, a young 
senator typical of this time, possessed no less than fifteen 
country seats, besides large estates in different parts of Italy 
and three town houses in Rome or her suburbs. It was his object 
to become Praetor of Rome, one of the highest offices in the 
city ; and in order to gain popularity he and his father organized 
public games that cost them some £90,000. Lions and crocodiles 
were fetched from Africa, dogs from Scotland, a special breed of 
horses from Spain ; while captured warriors were brought from 
Germany, whom he destined to fight with one another in the 
arena. 

The life of this young senator, according to his letters, was 
controlled by purely selfish considerations. He did not want 
the praetorship in order to be of use to the Empire, but merely 
that the Empire might crown his career with a coveted honour. 
The same narrow outlook and lack of public spirit was common 
to the majority of the other men and women of his class, and so 
great was their blindness that they could not even see that they 
were undermining Rome's power, far less avail to save her. 

More fatal even than the corruption of the aristocracy was the 
decline of the middle classes, usually called the backbone of a 
nation's greatness. ' The name of Roman citizen,' says a native 
of Marseilles in the fifth century, 'formerly so highly valued and 
even bought with a great price, is now . . . shunned, nay it is 
regarded with abomination.' 

This change from the days of St. Paul may be traced back 
long before the time when Symmachus wasted his patrimony in 
bringing crocodiles from Africa and horses from Spain. Its cause 
was the gradual but constant increase of taxation required to 



Taxation under the Roman Empire 13 

fill the imperial treasury, and the unequal scale according to 
which such taxation was levied. 

Rome's main source of revenue was an impost on land, and 
ought by rights to have been exacted from the senatorial class 
that owned the majority of the large estates. Unfortunately, it 
was left to the local municipal councils, the curias, to collect 
this tax, and if it fell short of the amount required from the 
locality by the imperial treasury, the curiales, or class com- 
pelled as a duty to attend the councils, were held responsible for 
the deficit. 

Here was a problem for Roman citizens of medium wealth, 
members of their curia by birth, quite unable to divest them- 
selves of this more than doubtful honour, and conscious that 
their sons at eighteen must also accept the dignity and put their 
shoulders to the burden. It was one thing to assess the chief 
landlords of the neighbourhood at a sum that matched their 
revenues, it was another to obtain the money from them. In 
England to-day the man who refuses to pay his taxes is punished ; 
in imperial Rome it was the tax-collector. 

Possessed of money and influence, it was not hard for a 
senator to outwit mere curiales, either by obtaining an exemp- 
tion from the Emperor, or by bribing the occasional inspectors 
sent by the central government to condone his refusal to pay. 
The imperial court set an example of corruption, and those who 
could imitate this example did so. 

The curiales, faced b}' ruin, sought relief in various ways. 
Those with most wealth tried to raise themselves to senatorial 
rank : others, unable to achieve this, yet conscious that they must 
obtain the money required at all costs, demanded the heaviest 
taxes from those who could not resist them, so that the phrase 
spread abroad, ' So many curiales just so many robbers.' 

Less important members of the middle classes, unable to pay 
their share of taxation or to force others to do so instead, tried 
in everyway to divest themselves of an honour grown intolerable, 
and the legislation of the later Empire shows their efforts to 
escape out of the net in which the government tried to hold them 
enmeshed. Some sought the protection of the nearest land- 



14 The Decline of Rome 

owners, and joined the dependants of their ' villas ' : others, 
though forbidden by law, entered the army : while others again 
sold themselves into slavery, since a master's self-interest would 
at least secure them food and clothing. 

More desperate and adventurous spirits saw in brigandage a 
means both of livelihood and of revenge. Joining themselves 
to bands of criminals and escaped slaves, they infested the high 
roads, waylaid and robbed travellers, and carried off their spoils 
to mountain fastnesses. Thus, through fraud or violence, the 
ranks of the curiales diminished, and taxation fell with still 
heavier pressure on those who remained to support its burdens. 

This evil state of affairs was intensified by the widespread 
system of slavery that, besides its bad influence on the character 
of both master and slave, had other economic defects. When 
forced labour and free work side by side, the former will nearly 
always drive the latter out of the market, .because it can be 
provided more cheaply. A master need not pay his slaves 
wages ; he can make them work as many hours as he chooses, 
and lodge and feed them, just as he pleases. From his point of 
view it is more convenient to employ men who cannot leave his 
service however much they dislike the work and conditions. 
For these reasons business and trade tended to fall into the 
hands of wealthy slave-owners who could undersell the employers 
of free labour, and as the number of slaves increased the number 
of free workmen grew less. 

In Rome, and the large towns also, free labourers who 
remained were corrupted like men and women of a higher rank 
by the general extravagance and love of pleasure. They did 
not agitate so much for a reform of taxation or the abolition of 
slavery, but for larger supplies of free corn and more frequent 
public games and spectacles. 

An extravagant court, a corrupt government, slavery, class 
selfishness, these were some of the principal causes of Rome's 
decline ; but in recording them it must be remembered that the 
taint was only gradual, like some corroding acid eating away 
good metal. Not all curiales, in spite of popular assertions, 
were robbers, not every taxpayer on the verge of starvation, 



Tacitus' 'Germania' 15 

not every dependant of a ' villa ' cowed and miserable. In many 
houses masters would free or help their slaves, slaves be found 
ready to die for their masters. The canker lay in the indifference 
of individual Roman citizens to evils that did not touch them 
personally, in the refusal to cure with radical reform even those 
that did, in the foolish confidence of the majority in the glory ot 
the past as a safeguard for the present. ' Faith in Rome killed 
all faith in a wider future for humanity.' 

This lack of vision has ruined many an empire and kingdom, 
and Rome only half-opened her eyes even when the despised 
barbarians who were to expose her weakness were already 
knocking at the imperial gates. 

' Barbarian ', we have noticed, was the epithet used by the 
Roman of the early Empire to describe and condemn the person 
not fortunate enough to share his citizenship. 

At this time the most formidable of the barbarians were the 
German tribes who inhabited large stretches of forest and 
mountain land to the north of the Danube and east of the Rhine 
■ — a tall, powerfully built race for the most part with ruddy hair 
and fierce blue eyes, whose business was warfare, and the 
occupation of their leisure hours the chase or gambling. 

In his book, the Germania, Tacitus, a famous Roman historian 
of the first century, describes these Teutons, and besides draw- 
ing attention to their primitive customs and lack of culture, he 
made copy of their simplicity to lash the vices of his own 
countrymen. 

The Germans, he said, did -not live in walled towns but in 
straggling villages standing amid fields. These were either 
shared as common pasturage or tilled in allotments, parcelled 
out annually amongst the inhabitants. A number of villages 
would form a pagus or canton, a number of pagi a civitas 
or state. At the head of the state was more usually a king, but 
sometimes only a number of important chiefs, or dukes, who 
would be treated with the utmost reverence. 

It was their place to preside over the small councils that dealt 
with the less important affairs of the state, and to lay before the 



1 6 The Decline of Rome 

larger meeting of the tribe measures that seemed to require 
public discussion. Lying round their camp fire in the moonlight 
the younger men would listen to the advice of the more 
experienced and clash their weapons as a sign of approval when 
some suggestion pleased them. 

At the councils were chosen the principes, or magistrates, 
whose duty it was to administer justice in the various cantons 
and villages. Tribal law was very primitive in comparison with 
the Roman code that required highly trained lawyers to interpret 
it. Had a man betrayed his fellow villagers to their enemies, 
let him be hung from the nearest tree that all might learn the 
fitting reward of treachery. Had he turned coward and fled 
from the battle, let him be buried in a morass out of sight beneath 
a hurdle, that such shame should be quickly forgotten. Had 
he in a rage or by accident slain or injured a neighbour, let him 
pay a fine in compensation, half to his victim's nearest relations, 
half to the state. If the decision did not satisfy those concerned, 
the family of the injured person could itself exact vengeance, 
but since it would probably meet with opposition in so doing, 
more bloodshed would almost certainly result, and a feud, like 
the later Corsican vendetta, be handed down from generation to 
generation. 

Such a state of unrest had no horror for the German tribesman. 
From his earliest days he looked forward to the moment when, 
receiving from his kinsmen the gift of a shield and sword, he 
might leave boyhood behind him and assume a man's responsi- 
bilities and dangers. With his comrades he would at once 
hasten to offer his services to some great leader of his tribe, and 
as a member of the latter's comitatus, or following, go joyfully 
out to battle. 

Like the Spartan of old he went with the cry ringing in his 
ears, ' With your shield or on your shield !' 

'It is a disgrace', says Tacitus, 'for the chief to be surpassed 
in battle . . . and it is an infamy and a reproach for life to have 
survived the chief and returned from the field.' 

This statement explains the reckless daring with which the 
scattered groups of Germans would fling themselves time after 



Tacitus' c Germania ' 1 7 

time against the disciplined Roman phalanxes. The women 
shared the hardihood of the race, bringing and receiving as 
wedding-gifts not ornaments or beautiful clothes but a warrior's 
horse, a lance, or sword. 

'Lest a woman should think herself to stand apart from 
aspirations after noble deeds and from the perils of war, she is 
reminded by the ceremony that inaugurates marriage that she is 
her husband's partner in toil and danger, destined to suffer and 
die with him alike both in peace and war.' 

Chaste, industrious, devoted to the interests of husband and 
children, yet so patriotic that, watching the battle, she would 
urge them rather to perish than retreat, the barbarian woman 
struck Tacitus as a living reproach to the many faithless, idle, 
pleasure-seeking wives and mothers of Rome in his own day. 
The German tribes might be uncouth, their armies without 
discipline, even their nobles ignorant of culture, but they were 
brave, hospitable, and loyal. Above all they held a distinction 
between right and wrong : they did not ' laugh at vice '. 

It is probable that in the days of Tacitus his views were 
received throughout the Roman Empire with an amused shrug 
of the shoulders, for to many the Germans were merely good 
fighters, whose giant build added considerably to the glory of a 
triumphal procession, when they walked sullenly in their shackles 
behind the Victor's car. With the passing of the years into 
centuries, however, intercourse changed this attitude, and much 
of the contempt on one side and hatred on the other vanished. 

Germans captured in childhood were brought up in Roman 
households and grew invaluable to their masters : numbers 
were freed and remained as citizens in the land of their captivity. 
The tribes along the borders became more civilized : they 
exchanged raw produce or furs in the nearest Roman markets 
for luxuries and comforts, and as their hatred of Rome dis- 
appeared admiration took its place. Something of the greatness 
of the Empire touched their imagination : they realized for the 
first time the possibilities of peace under an ordered government ; 
and whole tribes offered their allegiance to a power that knew 
not only how to conquer but to rule. 



1 8 The Decline of Rome 

Emperors, nothing loath, gathered these new forces under 
their standards as auxiliaries or allies {foederati), and Franks 
from Flanders, at the imperial bidding, drove back fellow 
barbarians from the left bank of the Rhine ; while fair-haired 
Alemanni and Saxons fell in Caesar's service on the plains ot 
Mesopotamia or on the arid sands of Africa. From auxiliary 
forces to the ranks of the regular army was an easy stage, the 
more so as the Roman legions were every year in greater need 
of recruits as the boundaries of the Empire spread. 

It is at first sight surprising to find that the military profession 
was unpopular when we recall that it rested in the hands of the 
legions to make or dispossess their rulers ; but such opportunities 
of acquiring bribes and plunder did not often fall to the lot of 
the ordinary soldier, while the disadvantages of his career were 
many. 

A very small proportion of the army was kept in the large 
towns of the south, save in Rome that had its own Praetorian 
Guards : the majority of the legions defended the Rhine and 
Danube frontiers, or still worse were quartered in cold and 
foggy Britain, shut up in fortress outposts like York or Chester. 
English regiments to-day think little of service in far-distant 
countries like Egypt or India, indeed men are often glad to have 
the experience of seeing other lands ; but the Roman soldier as 
he said farewell to his Italian village knew in his heart that it 
had practically passed out of his life. The shortest period of 
military service was sixteen years, the longest twenty-five ; and 
when we remember that, owing to the slow and difficult means 
of transport, leave was impossible we see the Roman legionary 
was little more than the serf of his government, bound to 
spend all the best years of his life defending less warlike 
countrymen. 

Moving with his family from outpost to outpost, the memories 
of his old home would grow blurred, and the legion to which he 
belonged would occupy the chief place in his thoughts. As he 
grew older his sons, bred in the atmosphere of war, would enlist 
in their turn, and so the military profession would tend to 
become a caste, handed down from father to son. 



Barbarian Invasions 1 9 

The soldier could have little sympathy with fellow citizens 
whose interests he did not share, but would despise them 
because they did not know how to use arms. The civilians, on 
their side, would think the soldier rough and ignorant, and 
forget how much they were dependent on his protection for their 
trade and pleasure. Instead of trying to bridge this gulf, the 
government, in their terror of losing taxpayers, widened it by 
refusing to let curiales enlist. At the same time they filled up 
the gaps in the legions with corps of Franks, Germans, or Goths ; 
because they were good fighting material, and others of their 
tribe had proved brave and loyal. 

In the same way, when land in Italy fell out of cultivation, 
the Emperor would send numbers of barbarians as coloni or 
settlers to till the fields and build themselves homes. At first 
they might be looked on with suspicion by their neighbours, but 
gradually they would intermarry and their sons adopt Roman 
habits, until in time their descendants would sit in municipal 
councils, and even rise to become Praetors or Consuls. 

When it is said that the Roman Empire fell because of the 
inroads of barbarians, the impression sometimes left on people's 
minds is that hordes of uncivilized tribes, filled with contempt 
for Rome's luxury and corruption, suddenly swept across the 
Alps in the fifth century, laying waste the whole of North Italy. 
This is far from the truth. The peaceful invasion of the Empire 
by barbarians, whether as slaves, traders, soldiers, or colonists, 
was a continuous movement from early imperial days. There 
is no doubt that, as it increased, it weakened the Roman power 
of resistance to the actually hostile raids along the frontiers that 
began in the second and third centuries and culminated in the 
collapse of the imperial government in the West in the fifth. 
An army partly composed of half-civilized barbarian troops 
could not prove so trustworthy as the well-disciplined and 
seasoned Romans of an earlier age ; for the foreign element 
was liable in some gust of passion to join forces with those of its 
own blood against its oath of allegiance. 

As to the main cause of the raids, it was rather love of Rome's 
wealth than a sturdy contempt of luxury that led these barbarians 

c 2 



20 The Decline of Rome 

to assault the dreaded legions. Had it been mere love of 
fighting, the Alemanni would as soon have slain their Saxon 
neighbours as the imperial troops ; but nowhere save in Spain, 
or southern Gaul, or on the plains of Italy could they hope to find 
opulent cities or herds of cattle. Plunder was their earliest 
rallying cry ; but in the third century the pressure of other 
tribes on their flank forced them to redouble in self-defence 
efforts begun for very different reasons. 

This movement of the barbarians has been called 'the 
Wandering of the Nations '. Gradually but surely, like a stream 
released from some mountain cavern, Goths from the North 
and Huns and Vandals from the East descended in irresistible 
numbers on southern Germany, driving the tribes who were 
already in possession there up against the barriers, first of the 
Danube and then of the Alps and Rhine. 

Italy and Gaul ceased to be merely a paradise for looters, but 
were sought by barbarians, who had learned something of 
Rome's civilization, as a refuge from other barbarians who trod 
women and children underfoot, leaving a track wherever their 
cruel hordes passed red with blood and fire. With their coming, 
Europe passed from the brightness of Rome into the 'Dark Ages'. 



Ill 

THE DAWN OF CHRISTIANITY 

When Augustus became Emperor of Rome, Jesus Christ was 
not yet born. With the exception of the Jews, who believed in 
the one Almighty 'Jehovah', most of the races within the 
boundaries of the Empire worshipped a number of gods ; and 
these, according to popular tales, were no better than the men 
and women who burned incense at their altars, but differed 
from them only in being immortal, and because they could yield 
to their passions and desires with greater success. 

The Roman god 'Juppiter', who was the same as the Greek 
' Zeus ', was often described as ' King of gods and men ' ; but 
far from proving himself an impartial judge and ruler, the legends 
in which he appears show him cruel, faithless, and revengeful. 
' Juno ', the Greek ' Hera ', ' Queen of Heaven ', was jealous 
and implacable in her wrath, as the ' much-enduring ' hero, 
Ulysses, found when time after time her spite drove him from 
his homeward course from Tro}\ 'Mercury', the messenger of 
the gods, was merely a cunning thief. 

Most of the thoughtful Greeks and Romans, it is true, came 
to regard the old mythology as a series of tales invented by their 
primitive ancestors to explain mysterious facts of nature like fire, 
thunder, earthquakes. Because, however, this form of worship 
had played so great a part in national history, patriotism dictated 
that it should not be forgotten entirely; and therefore emperors 
were raised to the number of the gods ; and citizens of Rome, 
whether they believed in their hearts or no, continued to burn 
incense before the altars of Juppiter, Juno, or Augustus in token 
of their loyalty to the Empire. 

The human race has found it almost impossible to believe in 



22 The Dawn of Christianity 

nothing, for man is always seeking theories to explain his higher 
nature and why it is he recognizes so early the difference 
between right and wrong. Far back in the third and fourth 
centuries before Christ, Greek philosophers had discussed the 
problem of the human soul, and some of them had laid down 
rules for leading the best life possible. 

Epicurus taught that since our present life is the only one, 
man must make it his object to gain the greatest amount of 
pleasure that he can. Of course this doctrine gave an opening 
to people who wished to live only for themselves ; but Epicurus 
himself had been simple, almost ascetic in his habits, and had 
clearly stated that although pleasure was his object, yet ' we can 
not live pleasantly without living wisely, nobly, and righteously'. 
The self-indulgent man will defeat his own ends by ruining his 
health and character until he closes his days not in pleasure but 
in misery. 

Another Greek philosopher was Zeno, whose followers were 
called ' Stoics ' from the stoa or porch of the house in Athens 
in which he taught his first disciples. Zeno believed that man's 
fortune was settled by destiny, and that he could only find true 
happiness by hardening himself until he grew indifferent to his 
fate. Death, pain, loss of friends, defeated ambitions, all these 
the Stoic must face without yielding to fear, grief, or passion. 
Brutus, the leader of the conspirators who slew Julius Caesar, 
was a Stoic, and Shakespeare in his tragedy shows the self-control 
that Brutus exerted when he learned that his wife Portia whom 
he loved had killed herself. 

The teaching of Epicurus and Zeno did something during the 
Roman Empire to provide ideals after which men could strive, 
but neither could hold out hopes of a happiness without end or 
blemish. The ' Hades ' of the old mythology was no heaven but 
a world of shades beyond the river Styx, gloomy alike for good 
and bad. At the gates stood the three-headed monster Cerberus, 
ready to prevent souls from escaping once more to light and 
sunshine. 

Paganism was thus a sad religion for all who thought of the 
future : and this is one of the reasons why the tidings of 



Early Christianity 23 

Christianity were received so joyfully. When St. Paul went 
to Athens he found an altar set up to 'the unknown God ', showing 
that men and women were out of sympathy with their old beliefs 
and seeking an answer to their doubts and questions. He tried 
to tell the Greeks that the Christ he preached was the God they 
sought ; but those who heard him ridiculed the idea that a 
Jewish peasant who had suffered the shameful death of the cross 
could possibly be divine. 

The earliest followers of Christianity were not as a rule 
cultured people like the Athenians, but those who were poor and 
ignorant. To them Christ's message was one of brotherhood 
and love overriding all differences between classes and nations. 
Yet it did not merely attract because it promised immortality and 
happiness ; it also set up a definite standard of right and wrong. 
The Jewish religion had laid down the Ten Commandments as 
the rule of life, but the Jews had never tried to persuade other 
nations to obey them — rather they had jealously guarded their 
beliefs from the Gentiles. The Christians on the other hand 
had received the direct command ' to go into all the world and 
preach the Gospel to every creature ' ; and even the slave, when 
he felt within himself the certainty of his new faith, would be 
sure to talk about it to others in his household. In time the 
strange story would reach the ears of his master and mistress, 
and they would begin to wonder if what this fellow believed so 
earnestly could possibly be true. 

In a brutal age, when the world was largely ruled by physical 
force, Christianity made a special appeal to women and to the 
higher type of men who hated violence. One argument in its 
favour amongst the observant was the life led by the early 
Christians — their gentleness, their meekness, and their con- 
stancy. It is one thing to suffer an insult through cowardice, quite 
another to bear it patiently and yet be brave enough to face 
torture and death rather than surrender convictions. Christian 
martyrs taught the world that their faith had nothing in it mean 
or spiritless. 

Perhaps it may seem strange that men and women whose con- 
duct was so quiet and inoffensive should meet with persecution 



24 The Dawn of Christianity 

at all. Christ had told His disciples to ' render unto Caesar the 
things that are Caesar's ', and the strength of Christianity lay 
not in rebellion to the civil government but in submission. This 
is true, yet the Christian who paid his taxes and took care to 
avoid breaking the laws of his province would find it hard all 
the same to live at peace with pagan fellow citizens. Like the 
Jew he could not pretend to worship gods whom he considered 
idols : he could not offer incense at the altars of Juppiter and 
Augustus : he could not go to a pagan feast and pour out a 
libation of wine to some deity, nor hang laurel branches sacred 
to the nymph Daphne over his door on occasions of public 
rejoicing. 

Such neglect of ordinary customs made him an object of 
suspicion and dislike amongst neighbours who did not share his 
faith. A hint was given here and there by mischief makers, and 
confirmed with nods and whisperings, that his quietness was only 
a cloak for evil practices in secret ; and this grew into a rumour 
throughout the Empire that the murder of newborn babies was 
part of the Christian rites. 

Had the Christians proved more pliant the imperial govern- 
ment might have cleared their name from such imputations and 
given them protection, but it also distrusted their refusal to 
share in public worship. Lax themselves, the emperors were 
ready to permit the god of the Jews or Christians a place 
amongst their own deities ; and they could not understand the 
attitude of mind that objected to a like toleration of Juppiter or 
Juno. The commandment ' Thou shalt have none other gods 
but me ' found no place in their faith, and they therefore 
accused the Christians and Jews of want of patriotism, and used 
them as scapegoats for the popular fury when occasion required. 

In the reign of Nero a tremendous fire broke out in Rome 
that reduced more than half the city to ruins. The Emperor, 
who was already unpopular because of his cruelty and ex- 
travagance, fearing that he would be held responsible for the 
calamity, declared hastily that he had evidence that the fire was 
planned by Christians ; and so the first serious persecution of 
the new faith began. 



Persecution of the Christians 25 

Here is part of an account given by Tacitus, whose history of 
the German tribes we have already noticed : 

' He, Nero, inflicted the most exquisite tortures on those men 
who under the vulgar appellation of Christians were already 
branded with deserved infamy. . . . They died in torments, and 
their torments were embittered by insult and derision. Some 
were nailed on crosses ; others sewn up in the skins of wild 
beasts and exposed to the fury of dogs ; others again, smeared 
over with combustible materials, were used as torches to illumi- 
nate the darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero were des- 
tined for this melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with 
a horse race and honoured with the presence of the Emperor.' 

Tacitus was himself a pagan and hostile to the Christians, yet 
he admits that this cruelty aroused sympathy. Nevertheless 
the persecutions continued under different emperors, some ot 
them, unlike Nero, wise rulers and good men. 

'These people', wrote the Spanish Emperor Trajan (98-117), 
referring to the Christians, ' should not be searched for, but if 
they are informed against and convicted they should be punished.' 

Marcus Aurelius (161-180) declared that those who acknow- 
ledged that they were Christians should be beaten to death ; and 
during his reign men and women were tortured and killed on ac- 
count of their faith in every part of the Empire. The test required 
by the magistrates was nearly always the same, that the accused 
must offer wine and incense before the statue of the Emperor 
and revile the name of Christ. 

The motive that inspired these later emperors was not Nero's 
innate love of cruelty or desire of finding a scapegoat, but 
genuine fear of a sect that grew steadily in numbers and wealth, 
and that threatened to interfere with the ordinary worship of the 
temples, so bound up with the national life. 

In the reign of Trajan the Governor of Bithynia wrote to the 
Emperor complaining that on account of the spread of Christian 
teaching little money was now spent in buying sacrificial beasts. 
' Nor ', he added, ' are cities alone permeated by the contagion of 
this superstition, but villages and country parts as well.' 

Emperors and magistrates were at first confident that, if only 



26 The Dawn of Christianity 

they were severe enough in their punishments, the new religion 
could be crushed out of existence. Instead it was the imperial 
government that collapsed while Christianity conquered Europe. 

Very early in the history of Christianity the Apostles had 
found it necessary to introduce some form of government into 
the Church ; and later, as the faith spread from country to 
country, there arose in each province men who from their good- 
ness, influence, or learning, were chosen by their fellow 
Christians to control the religious affairs of the neighbourhood. 
These were called ' Episcopi ', or bishops, from the Latin word 
Episcopus, 'an overseer'. Tradition claims that Peter was 
the first bishop of the Church in Rome, and that during the reign 
of Nero he was crucified for loyalty to the Christ he had formerly 
denied. 

To help the bishops a number of 'presbyters' or 'priests' 
were appointed, and below these again 'deacons' who should 
undertake the less responsible work. The first deacons had 
been employed in distributing the alms of the wealthier members 
of the congregation amongst the poor ; and though in early days 
the sums received were not large, yet as men of every rank 
accepted Christianity regardless of scorn or danger and made 
offerings of their goods, the revenues of the Church began to 
grow. The bishops also became persons of importance in the 
world around them. 

In time emperors and magistrates whose predecessors had 
believed in persecution came to recognize that it was not an 
advantage to the government, even a danger, and instead they 
began to consult and honour the men who were so much trusted 
by their fellow citizens. At last, in the fourth century, there 
succeeded to the throne an emperor who looked on Christianity 
not with hatred or dread, but with friendly eyes as a more 
valuable ally than the paganism of his fathers. This was the 
Emperor Constantine the Great. 



IV 



CONSTANTINE THE GREAT 

Constantine the Great was born at a time when the Empire 
was divided up between different emperors. His father, 
Constantius Chlorus, ruled over Spain, Gaul, and Britain ; and 
when he died at York in a. d. 306, Constantine his eldest son 
succeeded to the government of these provinces. The new 
Emperor, who was thirty-two years old, had been bred in 
the school of war. He was handsome, brave, and capable, and 
knew how to make himself popular with the legions under his 
command without losing his dignity or letting them become 
undisciplined. 

When he had reigned a few years he quarrelled with his 
brother-in-law Maxentius who was Emperor at Rome, and 
determined to cross the Alps and drive him from his throne. 
The task was difficult ; for the Roman army, consisting of picked 
Praetorian Guards, and regiments of Sicilians, Moors, and 
Carthaginians, was quite four times as large as the invading 
forces. Yet Constantine, once he had made his decision, did 
not hesitate. He knew his rival had little military experience, 
and that the corruption and luxury of the Roman court had not 
increased either his energy or valour. 

It is said also that Constantine believed that the God of the 
Christians was on his side, for as he prepared for a battle on the 
plains of Italy against vastly superior forces, he saw before him 
in the sky a shining cross and underneath the words ' By this 
conquer ! ' At once he gave orders that his legions should 
place on their shields the sign of the cross, and with this same 
sign as his banner he advanced to the attack. It was completely 
successful, the Roman army fled in confusion, Maxentius was 



28 Constantine the Great 

slain, and Constantine entered the capital almost unopposed. 
The arch in Rome that bears his name celebrates this triumph. 

Constantine was now Emperor of the whole of Western 
Europe, and some years later, after a furious struggle with 
Licinius the Emperor of the East, he succeeded in uniting all the 
provinces of the Empire under his rule. 

This was a joyful day for Christians, for though Constantine 
was not actually baptized until just before his death, yet, 




KOMAX€MPIR€ 

in thatirru of 

Coretanttra the Great 



throughout his reign, he showed his sympathy with the Christian 
religion and did all in his power to help those who professed it. 
He used his influence to prevent gladiatorial shows, abolished 
the horrible punishment of crucifixion, and made it easier than 
ever before for slaves to free themselves. When he could, 
he avoided pagan rites, though as Emperor he still retained the 
office of Pontifcx Maximus, or 'High Priest', and attended 
services in the temples. 

His mother, the Empress Helena, to whom he was devoted, 
was a Christian ; and one of the old legends describes her 



Growth of Christianity 29 

pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and how she found and brought 
back with her some wood from the cross on which Christ had 
been crucified. 

Soon after Constantine conquered Rome he published the 
famous ' Edict of Milan ' that allowed liberty of worship to all 
inhabitants of the Empire, whether pagans, Jews, or Christians. 
The latter were no longer to be treated as criminals but as 
citizens with full civil rights, while the places of worship and 
lands that had been taken from them were to be restored. 

Later, as Constantine's interest in the Christians deepened, he 
departed from this impartial attitude and showed them special 
favours, confiscating some of the treasures of the temples and 
giving them to the Church, as well as handing over to it sums of 
money out of the public revenues. He also tried to free the 
clergy from taxation, and allowed bishops to interfere with the 
civil law-courts. 

Many of these measures were unwise. For one thing, 
Christianity when it was persecuted or placed on a level with 
other religions only attracted those who really believed in 
Christ's teaching. When it received material advantages, on the 
other hand, the ambitious at once saw a way to royal favour and 
their own success by professing the new beliefs. A false element 
was thus introduced into the Church. 

For another thing, few even of the sincere Christians could be 
trusted not to abuse their privileges. The fourth century did 
not understand toleration ; and those who had suffered persecu- 
tion were quite ready as a rule to use compulsion in their turn 
towards men and women who disagreed with them, whether 
pagans or those of their own faith. Quite early in its history 
the Church was torn by disputes, since much of its teaching had 
been handed down by ' tradition ', or word of mouth, and this 
led to disagreement as to what Christ had really said or meant 
by many of his words. At length the Church decided that it 
would gather the principal doctrines of the ' Catholic ' or 
'universal' faith into a form of belief that men could learn and 
recite. Thus the ' Apostles' Creed ' came into existence. 

In spite of this definition of the faith controversy continued. 



30 Constantine the Great 

At the beginning of the fourth century a dispute as to the exact 
relationship of God the Father to God the Son in the doctrine of 
the Trinity broke out between Arius, a presbyter of the Church 
in Egypt, and the Bishop of Alexandria, the latter declaring that 
Arius had denied the divinity of Christ. Partisans defended 
either side, and the quarrel grew so embittered that an appeal 
was made to the Emperor to give his decision. 

Constantine was reluctant to interfere. 'They demand my 
judgement/ he said, ' who myself expect the judgement of Christ. 
What audacity of madness!' When he found, however, that 
some steps must be taken if there was to be any order in the 
Church at all, he summoned a Council to meet at Nicea 
and consider the question, and thither came bishops and clergy 
from all parts of the Christian world. The meetings were 
prolonged and stormy ; but the eloquence of a young Egyptian 
deacon called Athanasius decided the case against Arius ; and 
the latter, refusing to submit to the decrees of the Council, was 
proclaimed a heretic, or outlaw. The orthodox Catholics, that 
is, the majority of bishops who were present, then drew up a new 
creed to express their exact views, and this took its name from 
the Council, and was called the 'Nicene Creed'. In a revised 
form it is still recited in all the Catholic churches of Christendom. 

Arius, though defeated at the Council, succeeded in winning the 
Emperor over to his views, and Constantine tried to persuade 
the Catholics to receive him back into the Church. When this 
suggestion met with refusal the Emperor, who now believed that 
he had a right to settle ecclesiastical matters, was so angry that he 
tried to install Arius in one of the churches of his new city 
of Constantinople by force of arms. The orthodox bishop 
promptly closed and barred the gates, and riots ensued that 
were onhy ended by the death of Arius himself. 

The schism, however, continued, and it may be claimed that 
its bitterness had a considerable influence in deciding the future 
of Europe by raising barriers between races that might other- 
wise have become friends. Arianism, like orthodox Catholicism, 
was full of the missionary spirit, and from its priests the 
half-civilized tribes of Goths and Vandals learned the new faith. 



Early Monasticism 3 1 

A Gothic bishop was present at the Council of Nicea, while 
another, Ulfilas, who had studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew at 
Constantinople, afterwards translated a great part of the Bible 
into his own tongue. This is the first-known missionary Bible ; 
and, though the original has disappeared, a copy made about a 
century later is in a museum at Upsala, written in Gothic 
characters in silver and gold on purple vellum. 

The Goths regarded their Bible with deep awe, and carried it 
with them on their wanderings, consulting it before they went 
into battle. Like the Vandals, who had also been converted by 
the Arians, they considered themselves true Christians; but the 
orthodox Catholics disliked them as heretics almost more than 
the pagans. 

Constantine himself imbibed the spirit of fanaticism ; and 
when he became the champion of Arius, persecuted Athanasius, 
who had been made Bishop of Alexandria, and compelled him to go 
into exile. Athanasius went to Rome, where it is said that he was 
at first ridiculed because he was accompanied by two Egyptian 
monks in hoods and cowls. Western Europe had heard little 
as yet of monasticism, though the Eastern Church had adopted 
it for some time. 

To the early Christians with their high ideals the world 
around them seemed a wicked place, in which it was difficult for 
them to lead a Christ-like life. They thought that by withdraw- 
ing from an atmosphere of brutality and material pleasure, and 
by giving themselves up to fasting and prayer, they would be 
able more easily to fix their minds on God and so fit themselves 
for Heaven. Sometimes they would go to desert places and live 
as hermits in caves, perhaps without talking to a living person 
for months or even years. Others who could not face such 
loneliness would join a community of monks, dwelling together 
under special rules of discipline. At fixed hours of the day and 
night they would recite the services of the Church, and in between 
whiles they would work or pray and study the Scriptures. 

Many of the austerities they practised sound to us absurd, for 
it is hard to feel in sympathy with a Simon Stylites who spent 
the best days of his manhood crouched on a high pillar at the 



32 Constantine the Great 

mercy of sun, wind, and rain, until his limbs stiffened and 
withered away. Yet the hermits and monks were an arresting 
witness to Christianity in an age that had not fully realized what 
Christ's teaching meant. ' He that will serve me let him take 
up his cross and follow me.' This ideal of sacrifice was brought 
home for the first time to hundreds of thoughtless men and 
women when they saw some one whom they knew give up his 
worldly prospects and the joy of a home and children in order 
to lead a life of perpetual discomfort until death should come to 
him as a blessing not a curse. The majority of the leading 
clergy in the early Church, the ' Fathers of the Church ', as they 
are usually called, were monks. 

Two of them, St. Gregory and St. Basil, studied together at the 
University of Athens in the fourth century. St. Basil founded 
a community of monks in Asia Minor, where his reputation for 
holiness soon drew together a large number of disciples. He 
did not try to win them by fair words or the promise of ease and 
comfort, for his monks were allowed little to eat and spent their 
days in prayer and manual labour of the hardest kind. The 
Arians, who hated St. Basil as an orthodox Catholic, once threaten- 
ed that they would confiscate his belongings, torture him, and put 
him to death. 'My sole wealth is a ragged cloak and some 
books,' replied the hermit calmly. ' My days on earth are but 
a pilgrimage, and my body is so feeble that it will expire at the 
first torment. Death will be a relief.' It came when he was 
only fifty, but not at the hands of his enemies, for he died 
exhausted by the penances and privations of his customary life. 
He left many letters and theological works that throw light on 
the religious questions of his day. 

St. Gregory had lived for a time with St. Basil and his monks in 
Asia Minor but was not strong enough to submit to the same harsh 
discipline. Indeed he declared that but for the kindness of 
St. Basil's mother he would have died of starvation. Afterwards 
he returned home and was ordained a priest. He was a gentler 
type of man than St. Basil, a poet of no little merit and an eloquent 
preacher. 

Yet another of the Catholic ' Fathers of the Church ' was 



The Fathers of the Church 33 

St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. He was elected to this see against 
his own will by the people of the town, who respected him 
because he was strong and fearless. St. Ambrose did not hesitate 
to use the wealth of the Church, even melting down some of the 
altar-vessels, to ransom Christians who had been carried away 
captive during one of the barbarian invasions. ' The Church,' 
he declared, ' possesses gold and silver not to hoard, but to spend 
on the welfare and happiness of men.' 

The impetuosity and vigour that made him a born leader he 
also employed to express his intolerance of those who disagreed 
with him. When some Christians in Milan burned a Jewish 
synagogue and the Emperor Theodosius ordered them to re- 
build it, St. Ambrose advised them not to do so. ' I myself,' he 
said, ' would have burned the synagogue. . . . What has been done 
is but a trifling retaliation for acts of plunder and destruction 
committed by Jews and heretics against the Catholics.' This 
was not the spirit of the Founder of Christianity : it was too 
often the spirit of the mediaeval Church. 

A man of even greater influence than St. Ambrose of Milan was 
St. Jerome, a monk of the fifth century, who is chiefly remembered 
to-day because of his Latin translation of the Bible, ' the Vulgate ' 
as it is called, that is still the recognized edition of the Roman 
Catholic Church. 

St. Jerome was born in Italy, but in his extreme asceticism he 
followed the practices of the Eastern rather than the Western 
Church. As a youth he had led a wild life, but, suddenly 
repenting, he disappeared to live as a hermit in the desert, 
starving and mortifying himself. So strongly did he believe 
that this was the only road to Heaven that when he went to 
Rome he preached continually in favour of celibacy, urging men 
and women not to marry, as if marriage had been a sin. He was 
afraid that if they became happy and contented in their home life 
they would forget God. 

Many of the leading families, and especially their women, 
came under St. Jerome's influence, but such exaggerated views 
could never be really popular and, instead of being chosen 
Bishop of Rome as he had expected, he was forced, by the 



34 Constantine the Great 

many enemies he had aroused, to leave the town, and returned 
once more to the desert. Of his sincerity there can be little doubt, 
but his outlook on life was warped because, like so many good and 
earnest contemporary Christians, he believed that human nature 
and this earth were entirely bad and that only by the suppression 
of any enjoyment in them could the soul obtain salvation. 

Several centuries were to pass before St. Francis of Assisi 
taught his fellow men the beauty and value of what is human. 

Constantinople (the Polis or city of Constantine) had been 
a Greek colony under the name of Byzantium long before Rome 
existed. Built on the headland of the Golden Horn, its walls 
were lapped by an inland sea whose depth and smoothness made 
a splendid harbour from the rougher waters of the Mediterra- 
nean. Almost impregnable in its fortifications, it frowned on 
Asia across the narrow straits of the Hellespont and completely 
commanded the entrance to the Black Sea, with its rich ports, 
markets then as now for the corn and grain of southern Russia. 

Constantine, when he decided that Byzantium should be his 
capital, was well aware of these advantages. He had been born 
in the Balkans, had spent a great part of his life as a soldier in 
Asia, had assumed the imperial crown in Britain, and ruled 
Gaul for his first kingdom. This medley of experience left little 
place in his heart for Italy, and the name of Rome had no power 
to stir his blood. Rome to him was a corrupt town in one of 
the outlying limbs of his Empire : it had no harbour nor special 
military value on land, while the Alps were a barrier preventing 
news from passing quickly to and fro. Byzantium, on the other 
hand, near the mouth of the Danube, was easy of access and yet 
could be rendered almost impregnable to his foes. It had the 
great military advantage also of serving as an admirable head- 
quarters for keeping watch over the northern frontier and an 
outlook towards the East. 

The walls of the original town could not embrace the 
Emperor's ambitions, and he himself, wand in hand, designed 
the boundaries. His court, following him, gasped with dismay. 
' It is enough,' they urged ; 'no imperial city was ever so great 



Foundation of Constantinople 35 

before.' ' I shall go on,' replied Constantine, ' until he, the 
invisible guide who marches before me, thinks fit to stop.' 

Not until the seven hills outside Byzantium were enclosed 
within his circuit was the Emperor satisfied ; and then the great 
work of building began, and the white marble of Forum and 
Baths, of Palaces and Colonnades, arose to adorn the Constanti- 
nople that has ever since this time played so large a part in the 
history of Europe. In the new market-place, just beyond the 
original walls, was placed the 'Golden Milestone', a marble 
column within a small temple, bearing the proud inscription 
that here was the 'central point of the world'. Inside were 
statues of Constantine and Queen Helena his mother, while 
Rome herself and the cities of Greece were robbed of their master- 
pieces of sculpture to embellish the buildings of the new capital. 

In May a.d. 330 Constantinople was solemnly consecrated, 
and the Empire kept high festival in honour of an event that few 
of the revellers recognized would alter the whole course of her 
destiny. The new capital, through her splendid strategic 
position, was to preserve the imperial throne with one short 
lapse for more than a thousand years, but this advantage was 
obtained at the expense of Rome, and the complete severance of 
the interests of the Empire in the East and West. 

The Romans had never loved the Greeks, even when they 
most tidmired their art and subtle intellect, and now in the fourth 
century this persistent distrust was intensified when Greece 
usurped the glory that had been her conqueror's. In the 
absence of an Emperor and of the many high officials who had 
gone to swell the triumph of his new court, Rome set up another 
idol. The symbols of material glory might vanish, but the 
Christian faith had supplied men with fresh ideals through the 
teaching of the Apostles and their representatives, the Bishops. 

Roman bishops claimed that the gift of grace they received at 
their consecration had been passed down to them by the succes- 
sive laying-on of hands from St. Peter himself. ' Thou art Peter, 
and on this rock I will build my Church . . . and whatsoever 
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and whatso- 
ever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' 

d 2 



3 '6 Constantine the Great 

These words of Christ seemed to grant to his apostle complete 
authority over the souls of men ; and Christians at Rome began 
to ask if the power of St. Peter to ' bind and loose ' had not been 
handed down to his successors? If so II Papa, that is, 'their 
father ', the Pope, was undoubtedly the first bishop in Christen- 
dom, for on no other apostle had Christ bestowed a like 
authority. 

It must not be imagined that this reasoning came like a flash 
of inspiration or was willingly received by all Christians. Many 
generations of Popes, from the days of St. Peter onwards, were 
regarded merely as Bishops of Rome, that is, as ' overseers ' of 
the Church in the chief city of the Empire. They were loved 
and esteemed by their flock not on account of special divine 
authority but because they stood neither for self-interest nor for 
faction, but for principles of justice, mercy, and brotherhood. 

Had a Roman been robbed by a fellow citizen, were there 
a plague or famine, was the city threatened by enemies without 
her walls, it was to her bishop Rome turned, demanding help 
and protection. Afterwards it was only natural that the one 
power that could and did afford these things when Emperors 
and Senators were far away should in time take the Emperor's 
place, and that the Pope should appear to Rome, and gradually 
as we shall see to Western Europe, God's very viceroy on earth. 

To the Church in Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor he never 
assumed this halo of glory. Byzantium, the great Constanti- 
nople, was the pivot on which the eastern world turned, and the 
Bishop of Rome with his tradition of St. Peter made no authorita- 
tive appeal. Thus far back in the fourth century the cleft had 
already opened between the Churches of the East and West that 
was to widen into a veritable chasm. 

Constantine ' the Great ' died in 337, and if greatness be 
measured by achievement he well deserves his title. Where 
men of higher genius and originality had failed he had 
succeeded, beating down with calm perseverance every object 
that threatened his ambitions, until at last the Christian ruler of 
a united empire, feared and respected by subjects and enemies 
alike, he passed to his rest. 



V 

THE INVASIONS OF THE BARBARIANS 

Instead of endeavouring to maintain a united empire, 
Constantine in his will divided up his dominions between three 
sons and two nephews. Before thirty years were over, however, 
a series of murders and civil wars had exterminated his family ; 
and two brothers, Valentian and Valens, men of humble birth 
but capable soldiers, were elected as joint emperors. Valens 
ruled at Constantinople, his brother at Milan ; and it was during 
this reign that the Empire received one of the worst blows that 
had ever befallen her. 

We have already mentioned the Goths, a race of barbarians 
half-civilized by Roman influence and converted to Christianity 
by followers of Arius. One of their tribes, the Visigoths, had 
settled in large numbers in the country to the north of the Danube. 
On the whole their relations with the Empire were friendly, and 
it was hardly their fault that the peace was finally broken, but 
rather of a strange Tartar race the Huns, that, massing in the 
plains of Asia, had suddenly swept over Europe. Here is a 
description given of the Huns by a Gothic writer: 'Men with 
faces that can scarcely be called faces, rather shapeless black 
collops of flesh with tiny points instead of eyes : little in stature 
but lithe and active, skilful in riding, broad-shouldered, hiding 
under a barely human form the ferocity of a wild beast.' 

Tradition says that these monsters, mounted on their shaggy 
ponies, rode women and children under foot and feasted on human 
flesh. Whether this be true or no, their name became a terror to 
the civilized world, and after a few encounters with them the 
Visigoths crowded on the edge of the Danube and implored the 
Emperor to allow them to shelter behind the line of Roman forts. 

Valens, to whom the petition was made, hesitated. There was 



38 The Invasions of the Barbarians 

obvious danger to his dominions in this sudden influx of a whole 
tribe ; but on the other hand fear might madden the Visigoths 
into trying to cross even if he refused, and if so could he with- 
stand them ? 

'All the multitude that had escaped from the murderous 
savagery of the Huns/ says a writer of the day, ' no less than 
200,000 fighting men besides women and old men and children, 
were there on the river bank, stretching out their hands with 
loud lamentations . . . and promising that they would ever faith- 
fully adhere to the imperial alliance, if only the boon was granted 
them.' 

Reluctantly Valens yielded ; and soon the province of Dacia 
was crowded with refugees; but here the real trouble began. 
Food must be found for this multitude, and it was evident that the 
local crops would not suffice. In vain the Emperor commanded 
that corn should be imported : the greed of officials who were 
responsible for carrying out this order led them to hold up large 
consignments, and to sell what little they allowed to pass at wholly 
extortionate rates. Their unwelcome guests, half-starved and 
fleeced of the small savings they had been able to bring with 
them, complained, plotted, and broke at last into open rebellion. 

This treatment of the Visigoths in Dacia is one of the worst 
pages in the history of the Roman Empire, but it brought its own 
speedy punishment. The suspicion and hatred engendered by 
misery spread like a flame, and the barbarian forces were joined 
by deserters of their own race from the imperial legions and by 
runaway slaves until they had grown into a formidable army. 
Valens, forced to take steps to preserve his throne, met them on 
the battle-field of Adrianople, but only to suffer crushing defeat. 
He himself was slain, and some 40,000 of those who had served 
under his banner. 

Never before had the imperial eagles met with such a reverse 
at barbarian hands, and the Visigoths after the first moment of 
triumph were almost alarmed at the extent of their own success. 
Before the frowning walls of Constantinople their courage 
faltered, and without attempting a siege they retreated north- 
wards into Thrace. Gladly they came to terms with Theodosius, 



The Emperor Theodosius 39 

Valens's successor, who, not content with regranting them the 
lands to the south of the Danube that they so much desired, 
increased his army by taking whole regiments of their best 
warriors into his pay. 

' Lover of peace and of the Goths ' is the character with which 
Theodosius has passed down to posterity, and during his reign 
the Visigoths and other northern tribes received continual marks 
of his favour. 

One of the Gothic kings, the old chief Athanaric, went to visit 
him at Constantinople, and was overwhelmed by the magnificence 
and luxury he saw around him. ' Now do I at last behold,' he 
exclaimed, 'what I have often heard but deemed incredible. . . . 
Doubtless the Emperor is a God on earth, and he who raises a 
hand against him is guilty of his own blood.' 

The alliance between Goth and Greek served its purpose at 
the moment, for by the aid of his new troops Theodosius was able 
to defeat the rival Emperor of Rome and to conquer Italy. 
When he died he left Constantinople and the East to his eldest 
son Arcadius, a youth of eighteen, and Rome and the West to 
the younger, Honorius, who was only eleven. True to his belief 
in barbarian ability, Theodosius selected a Vandal chief, Stilicho, 
to whom he had given his niece in marriage, that he might act as 
the boy's adviser and command the imperial forces. 

Under a wise regent a nation may wait in patience for their child 
ruler to mature. Unfortunately, Honorius, as he grew up, belied 
any promise of manliness he had ever shown, languidly refusing 
to continue his boyish sports of riding or archery, and taking no 
interest save in some cocks and hens that it was his daily pleasure 
to feed himself. He had no affection or reverence for Rome, and 
finally settled in Ravenna on the Adriatic as the safest fortress 
in his dominions. From here he consented to sign the orders 
that dispatched the legions to protect his frontiers, or issued 
haughty manifestoes to his enemies. 

So long as Stilicho lived such feebleness passed comparatively 
unnoticed ; for the Vandal, a man of giant build and strength, 
possessed to the full the tireless energy and daring that the 
dangers of the time demanded. 



40 The Invasions of the Barbarians 

Theodosius had made the Visigoths his friends ; but on his 
death they began to chafe at the restrictions laid upon them by 
the imperial alliance. Arcadius was nearly as poor a creature as 
his younger brother, ' so inactive that he seldom spoke and always 
looked as though he were about to fall asleep.' The barbarians 
bore him no hatred, but on the other hand he could scarcely 
inspire their affection or fear, and so they chose a king of their 
own, Alaric, one of their most famous generals, and from this 
moment they began to think of fresh conquests and pillage. 

The suggestion of sacking Constantinople was put on one side. 
Those massive walls against their background of sea would make 
it a difficult task ; besides, the Visigoths argued, were there not 
other towns equally rich and more vulnerable ? With an 
exultant shout that answered this question they set out on their 
march first towards Illyricum on the eastern coast of the 
Adriatic, and then to the fertile plains of Italy. 

Alaric and Stilicho were well matched as generals, and for 
years, through arduous' campaigns of battles and sieges, the 
Vandal kept the Goth at bay. When at last death forced him 
to resign the challenge, it was no enemy's sword but the weapon 
of treachery that robbed Rome of her best defender. 

Honorius, lacking in gratitude as in other virtues, had been 
ill pleased at the success of his armies ; for wily courtiers, hoping 
to plant their fortunes amid another's ruin, told him that Stilicho 
intended to secure the imperial throne for himself and that in order 
to do so he would think little of murdering his royal master. 
Suspicion made the timid Emperor writhe with terror through 
sleepless nights. It seemed to him that he would never know 
peace of mind again until he had rid himself of his formidable 
commander-in-chief; and so by his orders Stilicho was put 
to death and Italy lay at the mercy of Alaric and his followers. 

Sweeping across the Alps, the Visigoths paused at last before 
the gates of Rome. 'We are many in number and prepared to 
fight,' boldly began the ambassadors sent out from the city. 
' Thick grass is easier to mow than thin,' replied Alaric. 

Dropping their lofty tone, the ambassadors demanded the 
price of peace, and on the answer, ' Your gold and silver, your 



Visigothic Invasion 41 

treasures, all that you have,' they exclaimed in horror, ' What then 
do you leave us ? ' ' Your souls,' was the mocking rejoinder. 

After much argument the Visigoths consented to be bought 
off and retreated northwards, but it was only to return in the 
summer of the year 410, when Rome after a feeble resistance 
opened her gates. Her enemies poured in triumph through the 
streets; but Alaric was no Hun loving slaughter for its own 
sake, and ordered his troops to respect human life and to spare 
the churches and the gold and silver vessels that rested on 
their altars, 

He spent only a few days in sacking the city and then 
marched southwards, intending to invade Africa. While his 
army was embarking, however, he fell ill and died, and so great 
was his loss that all thought of the campaign was surrendered. 
Alaric was mourned by his people as a national hero, and, un- 
able to bear the thought that his enemies might one day 
desecrate his tomb, they dammed up a river in the neighbour- 
hood, and dug a grave for their general deep in its bed. When 
they had laid his body there, they released the stream into its 
old course, and so left their hero safe from insult beneath the 
waters. 

The sack of Rome that moved the civilized world profoundly 
made little impression upon the young Emperor. He had 
named one of his favourite hens after the capital ; and when 
a messenger, haggard with the news he had brought, fell on his 
knees, gasping, 'Sire, Rome has perished,' Honorius only 
frowned, and replied, 'Impossible! I fed her myself this 
morning.' 

St. Jerome, in his hermit's cell at Bethlehem, was stupefied at 
the fate of the ' Eternal City'. 'The world crumbles,' he said. 
' There is no created work that rust or age does not consume : 
but Rome ! Who could have believed that, raised by her 
victories above the universe, she would one day fall ? ' 

Why had Rome fallen? This was the question on every- 
body's lips. We know to-day that the process of her corruption 
had been working for centuries ; but men and women rarely see 
what is going on around them, and some began to murmur that 



42 The Invasions of the Barbarians 

the old gods of Olympus were angry because their religion had 
been forsaken. It was affirmed that Christ would save the 
world, but what had He done to save Rome ? 

Christianity was not long in finding a champion to defend her 
cause — an African monk, Augustine, to mediaeval minds the 
greatest of all the ' Fathers of the Church '. Augustine was the 
son of a pagan father and a Christian mother and grew up 
a wild and undisciplined boy. After some years at the University 
of Carthage, spent in casual study and habitual dissipation, he deter- 
mined to go to Rome, and from there passed to Milan, where he 
went out of curiosity to listen to the preaching of St. Ambrose. 
It was obvious that he would either hate or be strongly 
influenced by this fiery old man ; and in truth Augustine, 
who secretly repented of the way he had wasted his life, was in 
a ripe mood to receive the message that he had refused to hear 
from the lips of Monica his mother. Soon he was converted 
and baptized, and later he was made Bishop of Hippo, a place 
not far from Carthage. 

It is difficult to give a picture of Augustine in a few words. 
Like St. Ambrose and others of the early ' Fathers ' he was quite 
intolerant of heresy and believed that ordinary human love and 
the simplest pleasures of the world were snares set by the devil 
to catch the unwary ; but against these unbalanced views, largely 
the product of the age in which he lived, must be set his burning 
enthusiasm for God, and the services that he rendered to 
Christianity. 

A modern writer says of him, ' As the supreme man of his 
time he summed up the past as it still lived, remoulded it, added 
to it from himself, and gave it a new unity and form wherein it 
was to live on. . . . The great heart, the great mind, the mind 
led by the heart's inspiration, the heart guided by the mind— 
this is Augustine.' 

Superior in intellect to other men of his day, his whole being 
filled with the love of God and fired by the desire to make the 
world share his worship, he preached, worked, and wrote only 
to this end. In his Confessions he describes his youth and 
repentance ; but his most famous work is his Civitas Dei. 



Vandal Invasion 43 

Here was the answer to those who declared that Rome had 
fallen because she neglected her pagan deities. Rome, he 
maintained, was not and never could be eternal ; for the one 
eternal kingdom was the Civitas Dei, or ' City of God ', 
towards whose reign of triumph the human race had been 
tending since earliest times. Before her glory the kingdoms of 
this world, and all the culture and civilization of which men 
boasted, must fade away. Thus God had destined ; and 
St. Augustine exerted all his eloquence and powers of reasoning 
to prove from history the magnitude and sureness of the divine 
purpose. 

The author of the Civttas Dei was to have his faith severely 
tested, for he died amid scenes of desolation and horror that 
held out no hope of happiness for man on earth. Rome stood 
at the mercy of barbarians, and Christian Africa was also fast 
falling under their yoke. These new invaders, the Vandals, 
were also a German tribe, who, as soon as Stilicho withdrew 
legions from the Rhine to defend Italy from the Visigoths, 
broke over the weakened frontier into Gaul, and from there 
Crossed the Pyrenees and marched southwards. 

Spain had been one of the richest of Rome's provinces, and 
besides her minerals and corn had provided the Empire with not 
a few rulers as well as famous authors and poets. In her com- 
mercial prosperity she had grown, like her neighbours, corrupt 
and unwarlike, so that the Vandals met with little resistance and 
plundered and pillaged at their will. ^n^teJ^of_s^tiIing_down 
amid their conquests they were driven by the promise of further 
loot and the pressure of other barbarian tribes following hard on 
their heels to cross the narrow Strait of Gibraltar and to pursue 
their way due east along the African coast. In Spain they have 
left the memory of their presence in the name of one of her 
fairest provinces, Andalusia. 

The chief of the Vandals at this time was Genseric, who not 
only conquered all the coast-line of North Africa, but also built 
a fleet that became the terror of the Mediterranean.} Like the 



Goths the Vandals were Christians, but they held the views of 
Arius and there could be little hope that they would tolerate the 



44 The Invasions of the Barbarians 

orthodox Catholics. Though hardly as inhuman and ruthless 
as their opponents would have had the world believe, they pillaged 
and laid waste as they passed ; and posterity has since applied 
the word vandal to the man who wilfully destroys. 

The name ' Hun ' is of even more sinister repute. In the first 
half of the fifth century the Huns in their triumphant march 
across Europe were led by their king, Attila, 'the Scourge of 
God ', whose boast it was that never grass grew again where his 
horse's hoofs had once trod. So short and squat as to be almost 
deformed, flat-nosed, with a swarthy skin and deep-set eyes, 
that he would roll hideously when angered, the King loved to 
inspire terror not only amongst his enemies but in the chieftains 
under his command. Pity, gentleness, civilization, such words 
were either unknown or abhorrent to him ; and in the towns 
whose walls were stormed by his troops, old men, women, 
priests, and children fell alike victims to his sword. 

It was his ambition that the name of 'Attila ' should become a 
terror to the whole earth, but the extent to which he succeeded 
in realizing this aim brought a serious check to his arms ; for 
when he reached the boundaries of Gaul, he found that fear had 
gathered into a single hostile force of formidable size races that 
had warred for centuries amongst themselves. Here were not 
only 'Provincials', descendants of the Romanized inhabitants 
of Gaul, but Goths, Franks, Burgundians, and other tribes who, 
like the Vandals, had forced the passage of the Rhine as soon 
as the imperial garrisons were weakened or withdrawn. They 
had little in common save hatred of the Hun, a passion so 
strong that in a desperate battle on the plain of Chalons they 
hurled back the Tartar hordes for ever from the lands of 
Western Europe. 

Shaken by his defeat, but sullen and vindictive, Attila turned 
his thoughts to Italy; and he and his warriors swept across the 
passes of the Alps and descended on the fertile country lying to 
the north-west of the Adriatic. The Italians made but a feeble 
resistance, and the palaces, baths, and amphitheatres of once 
wealthy towns vanished in smoking ruins. 

One important work of construction Attila unconsciously 



Vandal Sack of Rome 45 

assisted, for the inhabitants of Aquileia, seeking a refuge from 
their cruel foe, fled to the coast, and there amid the desolate 
lagoons they and their descendants built for themselves in the 
course of centuries a new city, Venice, the future ' Queen of the 
Adriatic \ Aquileia had been a city of repute, but it can be 
safely guessed that she would never have attained the world- 
wide glory that Venice, safe behind her barrier of marshes and 
with every incentive to naval enterprise, was to establish in the 
Middle Ages. 

From the Adriatic provinces Attila passed to Rome, but 
refrained from sacking the city. It is said that he was uneasy 
because the armies of Gaul that had defeated him at Chalons 
still hung on his rear, threatening to cut off his retreat across 
the Alps. At any rate, he consented to make terms negotiated 
by the Pope on behalf of the citizens of Rome. Contemporary 
accounts declare that the Hun was awed by the sight of Leo I 
in his priestly robes and by the fearlessness of his bearing, and 
certainly for his mediation he well deserved the title of 'Great' 
that the people in their gratitude bestowed on him. 

Attila, when he left Rome, turned northwards, but died quite 
shortly after some drunken orgy. The kingdom of massacre 
and fire that he had built on the terror of his name fell rapidly 
to pieces, and only the remembrance of that terror remained ; 
while Huns merged themselves in the armies of other tribes or 
fought together in petty rivalry. 

yJRome had been taken by Alaric the Visigoth and spared by 
Attila, but her trials were not yet at an end. Genseric, the 
Vandal king, who had established himself at Carthage, was only 
awaiting his opportunity to plunder a city that was still a world- 
famous treasure house. His fleet, that had cut off Italy entirely 
from the cornfields of Egypt, blockaded the mouth of the Tiber, 
and the Romans, weakened by famine and the warfare of the 
past few years, quickly sued for peace. 

Once more Pope Leo went as mediator to the camp of his 
enemies ; but the Arian Vandal, unlike the pagan Hun, was 
adamant. He was willing to forgo a general massacre but 
nothing further, and for a fortnight the city was ruthlessly 



46 The Invasions of the Barbarians 

pillaged. Then Genseric sailed away, carrying with him 
thousands of prisoners besides all the treasures of money and 
art on which he could lay hands. Nearly four hundred years 
before, the Emperor Titus, when he sacked Jerusalem, brought 
to Rome the golden altar and candlesticks of the Jewish Temple, 
and now Rome in her turn was despoiled of these trophies of 
her former victories. 

It was little wonder if the Western emperors, who had 
systematically failed to save their capital, became discredited at 
last among their own troops, and Rome, that had begun life accord- 
ing to tradition under a ' Romulus ', was to end her Empire under 
another, a handsome boy, nicknamed in derision of his helpless- 
ness 'Augustulus', or 'little Augustus'. 

The pretext of his deposition was his refusal to grant Italian 
lands to the German troops who formed the main part of the 
imperial army, on which their captain, Odoacer, compelled him 
to abdicate. So low had the imperial dignity sunk in public 
estimation that Odoacer, instead of claiming the once-coveted 
honour, sent the diadem and purple robe to the Emperor at 
Constantinople. ' We disclaim the necessity or even the wish ', 
wrote Augustulus, ' of continuing an)' longer the imperial 
succession in Italy. . . . The majesty of a sole monarch is suffi- 
cient to pervade and protect at the same time both East and West.' 

The writer, so fortunate in his insignificance that no one 
wished to assassinate him, spent the rest of his days in a castle 
by the Mediterranean, supported by a revenue from the state; 
while Odoacer. with the title of ' Patrician ', ruled the land with 
statesmanlike moderation for fourteen years. 

Two more waves of invasion were yet to break across the 
Alps and hinder all attempts at restoration and unity. The first 
was that of the ' Ostrogoths ', or ' Eastern ' Goths, a tribe of the 
same race as the Visigoths that, meeting the first onslaught of 
the Huns in their advance from Asia, had only just on the death 
of Attila freed themselves from this terrible yoke. They sought 
now an independent kingdom, and under the leadership of their 
prince, Theodoric, chafed on the boundaries of the Eastern 
Empire, with which they had formed an alliance. 



Ostrogothic Invasion 47 

Theodoric had been educated in Constantinople, and though 
brave and warlike did not share the reckless love of battle that 
animated his followers. He realized, however, that he must 
lead the Ostrogoths to a new land of plenty or incur their 
hatred and suspicion, so he appealed to the Emperor Zeno for 
leave to go to Italy as his general and depose Odoacer. 
' Direct me with the soldiers of my nation,' he wrote, 'to march 
against the tyrant. If I fall you will be relieved from an 
expensive and troublesome friend ; if, with divine permission, 
I succeed, I shall govern in your name and to your glory.' 

Zeno had not been sufficiently powerful to prevent Odoacer 
from taking the title of ' Patrician ', but he had never liked the 
' barbarian upstart ' who had dared to depose an emperor. He 
had also begun to dread the presence of the restless Ostrogoths 
so close to Constantinople, and warmly appreciated Theodoric's 
arguments in favour of their exodus. If the two barbarian 
kings destroyed one another, it would be all the better for the 
Empire, and so with the imperial blessing Theodoric started on 
his great adventure. 

He took with him not only his warriors but the women and 
children of his tribe and all their possessions ; and after several 
battles succeeded in defeating and slaying his opponent. Rome, 
that looked upon him as the Emperor's representative, joyfully 
opened her gates, but Theodoric preferred to make Ravenna his 
capital, and here he settled and planted an orchard with his own 
hands. 

It was his hope that he might win the trust and affection 
of his new subjects, and, though he ruled exactly as he liked, 
he remained outwardly submissive to the Emperor, writing him 
humble letters and marking the coinage with the imperial stamp. 
He frequently consulted the Senate at Rome that, though it had 
long ago lost any real power, had never ceased to take a nominal 
share in the government ; and when he gave a third of the 
Italian lands to his own countrymen he allowed Roman 
officials to make the division. 

Theodoric also maintained the laws and customs of Italy and 
forced the Ostrogoths to respect them too ; but his army 



48 The Invasions of the Barbarians 

remained a national bodyguard, and in spite of his efforts at 
conciliation the two peoples did not mingle. Between them 
stood the barrier of religious bitterness, for the Ostrogoths were 
Arians, and, though their ruler was very tolerant in his attitude, 
the Catholics were always suspicious of his intentions. 

On one occasion there had been a riot against the Jews and 
several synagogues had been burned. Theodoric ordered 
a collection of money to be made amongst the orthodox 
Catholics who were responsible, that the buildings might be 
restored. This command was disobeyed, and when the ring- 
leaders of the strike were whipped through the streets, popular 
anger against the Gothic king grew to white heat. He himself 
changed in character as he became older and showed himself 
morose and tyrannical. Towards the end of his reign he put to 
death Boethius, a Roman senator, who had been one of his 
favourite advisers, but who had dared to defend openly a man 
whom he himself had condemned. 

Boethius was not only a fearless champion of his friends — he 
was a great scholar who had kept alight the torch of classical 
learning amid the darkness and horror of invasion. Besides 
translating some of the works of Aristotle he wrote treatises on 
logic, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, and made an able 
defence of the Nicene Creed against Arian attacks. The last 
and most famous of his works, that for ten centuries men have 
remembered and loved, was his Consolations of Philosophy, 
written when death in a most horrible form was already drawing 
close. Tortured by a cord drawn closely round his forehead, 
and then beaten with clubs, the philosopher escaped from 
a life where fortune had dealt with him cruelly. His master 
survived him by two years, repenting on his death-bed in an 
agony of remorse the brutal sentence he had meted out. 

It is scarcely fair to judge Theodoric by the tyranny of his last 
days. It is better to recall the glory of his prime, and how 'in 
the Western part of the Empire there was no people who refused 
him homage '. Allied by family ties with the Burgundians, the 
Visigoths, the Vandals, and the Franks, he was undoubtedly the 
greatest of all the barbarians of his age. Had his successors 



The Emperor Justinian 49 

shown a little of his statesmanlike qualities, Ostrogoth and 
Italian, in spite of their religious differences, might have united 
to form a single nation, but unfortunately, before twenty years had 
passed, the kingdom he had founded was destined to disappear. 

Theodoric was succeeded by his grandson, a boy who lived 
only a few years, and then by a worthless nephew, without 
either royal or statesmanlike qualities. In contrast to this weak 
dynasty, there ruled at Constantinople an Emperor who possessed 
in the highest degree the ability and steadfastness of purpose 
that the times required. 

Justinian was only a peasant by birth, but he had been well 
educated and took a keen interest not only in questions of law and 
finance that concerned the government but in theology, music, and 
architecture. In his manner to his subjects he was friendly 
though dignified, but there was something unsympathetic in his 
nature that prevented him from becoming popular. His courtiers 
regarded his industry with awe, but some professed to believe 
that he could not spend so many midnight hours at work unless 
he were an evil spirit not requiring sleep. One writer says that 
'no one ever remembered him young': yet this serious prince 
married for love a beautiful actress, Theodora, and dared, in the 
face of general indignation, to make her his empress. An 
historian of the time says of Theodora, - it were impossible for 
mere man to describe her comeliness in words or imitate it in 
art ' ; yet she was no doll, but took a very definite share in the 
government, extorting admiration by her dignity even from 
those who had pretended to despise her. 

Justinian's chief passion was for building, and he spent a great 
part of his revenue in erecting bridges, baths, forts, and palaces. 
Most famous of all the architecture of his time was Saint Sophia, 
'the Church of the Holy Wisdom', that after Constantinople 
passed into the hands of the Turks became a mosque. 

It is not, however, for Saint Sophia that Justinian is chiefly 
remembered but for the Corpus Juris Civilis, literally ' the body 
of Civil Law', that he published in order that his subjects 
might know what the Roman law really was. The Corpus Juris 
Civilis consisted of three parts — the ' Code ', a collection 



50 The Invasions of the Barbarians 

of decrees made by various emperors ; next the ' Digest ', the 
decisions of eminent lawyers;- and thirdly the 'Institutes', an 
explanation of the principles of Roman law. 'After thirteen 
centuries,' says a modern writer, ' it stands unsurpassed as 
a treasury of legal knowledge ; ' and all through the Middle Ages 
men were to look to it for inspiration. Thus it was on the 
Corpus Juris Civilis that ecclesiastical lawyers based the Canon 
law that gave to the Pope an emperor's power over the Church. 
Justinian worked for the progress of the world when he 
codified Roman law. It was unfortunate that military ambition 
led him to exhaust his treasury and overtax his subjects, in order 
that he might establish his rule over the whole of Europe like 
Theodosius and Constantine. Besides carrying on an almost 
continuous war with the King of Persia, he sent an army and fleet 
under an able general, Belisarius, to fight against the Vandals 
in North Africa ; and so successful was this campaign that 
Justinian became master of the whole coast-line, and even of a 
part of southern Spain. This gave him command of the 
Mediterranean, and he at once determined to overthrow the 
feeble descendants of Theodoric, and to restore the imperial 
dominion over Italy in deed, not as it had been from the time of 
Odoacer merely in name. 

The task was not easy, for the Italians, as we have noticed, 
did not love the Greeks, while the Goths fought bravely for 
independence. At length, in the year 555, after nineteen 
campaigns, Narses, an Armenian who was at the head of 
Justinian's forces, succeeded in crushing the Barbarians and 
established his rule at Ravenna, from which city, under the 
title of Exarch, he controlled the whole peninsula. 

Narses' triumph had been in a great measure due to a German 
tribe, 'The Lombards ', whose hosts he had enrolled under the im- 
perial banner. These Lombards, Longobardi or ' Long Beards ' 
as the name originally stood, had migrated from the banks of the 
Elbe to the basin of the Danube, and there, looking about them for 
a warlike outlet for their energies, were quite as willing to invade 
Italy at Justinian's command as to go on any other campaign 
that promised to be profitable. 



Lombard Invasion 51 

N arses, as soon as he was assured of success, paid them 
liberally fortheir services and sent them back to their own people ; 
but the Lombards had learned to love the sunny climate and the 
vines growing out of doors, and were soon discontented with 
their bleaker homeland. They waited therefore until Narses, 
whom they knew and feared, was dead ; and then, under the 
leadership of Alboin, their king, crossed over the Alps and 
invaded North Italy. They did not come in such tremendous 
strength as the Ostrogoths in the past, nor were the imperial 
troops powerless to stand against them : indeed, the two forces 
were so balanced that, while the Lombards succeeded in estab- 
lishing themselves in the province of Lombardy, to which they 
gave their name, with Pavia as its capital, the representatives of 
the Emperor still held the coast-line on both sides, also Ravenna, 
Naples, Rome, and other principal towns. 

This Lombard inroad, the last of the great Barbarian invasions 
of Italy, was by far the most important in its effects. For one 
thing, two hundred years were to pass before the power of the 
new settlers was seriously shaken ; and therefore, even the fact 
that they were pagans and imposed their own laws ruthlessly on 
the Italians could not keep the races from gradually inter- 
mingling. In time the higher civilization conquered, and the 
fair-haired Teutons learned to worship the Christian God, forgot 
their own tongue, and adopted the customs and habits they saw 
around them. The Italians, on their part, in the course of their 
struggles with the Lombards became trained in the art of war 
they had almost forgotten. By the eighth century the fusion was 
complete. 

Another very interesting and important result of the Lombard 
invasion was that the prolonged duel between Barbarians and 
Greeks prevented the development of any common form of 
government. There might in time emerge an Italian race, but 
there could be no Italian nation so long as towns and provinces 
were dominated by rulers whose policy and ambitions were 
utterly opposed. The Exarch of Ravenna claimed, in the name 
of the Emperor at Constantinople, to collect taxes from and 
administer the whole peninsula, but in practice he often ruled 



52 The Invasions of the Barbarians 

merely the strip of land round his city cut off from other Greek 
officials by Lombard dukes. He would be able to communicate 
by sea with the important towns on or near the coast, such as 
Naples, but so irregularly that their governments would tend 
to grow every year more independent of his control. In Rome, 
for instance, there was not only the Senate with its traditions of 
government, but the Pope, who even more than the Senate had 
become the protector and adviser of his fellow citizens. 

We have seen how Leo ' the Great ' persuaded Attila the Hun 
to withdraw when his armies threatened the very gates of Rome, 
while later he went on a like though unavailing mission to 
Genseric the Vandal. It was acts like these that won recognition 
for the Papacy amongst other rulers ; and more than any of the 
Popes before him, Gregory ' the Great ', who ascended the chair 
of Peter in a.d. 590, built up the foundations of this authority. 

A Roman of position and wealth, Gregory had become in 
middle age a poor monk, giving all his money to the poor and 
disciplining himself by fasting and penance. He is remembered 
best in England to-day for the interest he showed in the fair- 
haired Angles in the Roman slave-market. 'They have Angels' 
faces, they should be fellow-heirs of the Angels in Heaven/ 
His comment he followed up by a petition that he might sail as 
a missionary to the northern island from which these slaves 
came ; and, when instead he was sent on an embassy to 
Constantinople, he did not forget England in the years that 
passed, but after he became Pope, chose St. Augustine to go and 
convert the heathen King of Kent. In this way southern England 
was christianized and brought into touch with the life of Western 
Europe. 

' A great Pope,' it has been said, ' is always a missionary Pope.' 
Gregory had the true missionary's enthusiasm, and his writings, 
all of them theological, bear the stamp of St. Augustine of Hippo's 
ardent spirit enforced with a faith absolutely assured and 
unbending. Besides being instrumental in converting England, 
Gregory during his pontificate saw the Arian Church in Spain 
reconciled to the Catholic, while he succeeded in winning the 
Lombard king to Christianity and friendship. 



Pope Gregory c the Great' 53 

It was little wonder that the people of Rome, who had been at 
war with these invaders for long years, looked up to the peace- 
maker not only as their spiritual father but also as a temporal 
ruler. Had he not fed them when they were starving, declaring 
that it was thus the Church should use her wealth ? Had he 
not raised soldiers to guard the walls and sent out envoys 
to plead the city's cause against her enemies ? There was no 
such practical help to be obtained from the Exarchs of Ravenna, 
talk as they might about the glories of Constantinople. Thus 
Romans argued, and Gregory, who knew the real weakness 
of Constantinople, was able to disregard the imperial viceroys 
when he chose, a policy of independence followed by his 
successors. 

Since the Lombard kingdom had split up into a number 
of duchies each with its own capital, Italy, in the early Middle 
Ages, tended to become a group of city states, each jealous of its 
neighbours and ambitious only for local interests. This provincial 
influence was so strong that it has lasted into modern times. An 
Englishman or a Frenchman will claim his country before 
thinking of the particular part from which he comes, but it is 
more natural for an Italian to say first ' I am Roman,' or 
'Neapolitan,' or 'Florentine,' as the case may be. It is only 
by remembering this difference that Italian history can be read 
aright. 



Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary , see pp. 368-73. 

a. 0. 

The Emperors Valentian and Valens 364 

Battle of Adrianople 378 

The Emperor Theodosius 379-95 

Vandal Invasion of Africa 441 

Battle of Chalons 451 

Huns invade Italy 452 

Pope Leo I ' the Great ' 440 



VI 

THE RISE OF THE FRANKS 

The historian Tacitus, whose description of the German tribes 
we have already quoted, had told the people of Gaul that, unless 
these same Germans were kept at bay by the Roman armies on 
the Rhine frontier, they would ' exchange the solitude of their 
woods and morasses for the wealth and fertility of Gaul '. ' The 
fall of Rome,' he added, ' would be fatal to the provinces, and 
you would be buried in the ruins of that mighty fabric.' 

This prophetic warning proved only too true when Vandal 
and Visigoth, Burgundian, Hun, and Frank forced the passage 
of the Rhine, and swept in irresistible masses across vineyards 
and cornfields, setting fire to those towns and fortresses that 
dared to offer resistance. The Vandal migration was but a 
meteor flash on the road to Spain and North Africa ; while on 
the battle-field of Chalons the Huns were beaten back and carried 
their campaign of bloodshed to Italy: but the other three tribes 
succeeded in establishing formidable kingdoms in Gaul during 
the fifth and sixth centuries. 

At the head of the Visigoths rode Athaulf, brother-in-law ol 
Alaric, unanimously chosen king by the tribe on the death of 
that mighty warrior. 1 Instead of continuing the campaign in 
South Italy, Athaulf had made peace with the Emperor Honorius 
and married his sister, thus gaining a semi-royal position in the 
eyes of Roman citizens. 

' I once aspired,' he said frankly, ' to obliterate the name of 
Rome and to erect on its ruins the dominion of the Goths, 
but ... I was gradually convinced that laws are essentially 
necessary to maintain and regulate a well-constituted state. . . . 
From that moment, I proposed to myself a different object of 

Sec p. 41. 



The Franks 55 

glory and ambition ; and it is now my sincere wish that the 
gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merits of a 
stranger, who employed the sword of the Goths, not to subvert, 
but to restore and maintain the prosperity of the Roman 
Empire/ 

Fortified by such sentiments and the benediction of the 
Emperor, who was glad to free Italy from his brother-in-law's 
presence, Athaulf succeeded, after a short struggle, in establish- 
ing a Visigothic kingdom in southern Gaul, stretching from the 
Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay. This, under his successors, 
was enlarged until it embraced the whole of the province of 
Aquitania, with Toulouse as its capital, as well as both slopes of 
the Pyrenees. 

The Burgundians, another German tribe, had, in the mean- 
while, built up a middle kingdom along the banks of the Rhone. 
Years of intercourse with the Romans had done much to civilize 
both their manners and thoughts, and they were quite prepared 
to respect the laws and customs that they found in Gaul so long 
as they met with no serious opposition to their rule. The fact 
that both Burgundians and Visigoths were Arians raised, how- 
ever, a fatal barrier between conquerors and conquered, and did 
more than anything else to determine that ultimate dominion 
over the whole of Gaul should be the prize of neither of these 
races, but of a third Teutonic tribe, the Salian Franks, whom 
good fortune placed beyond the influence of heresy. 

The Franks were a tall, fair-haired, loose-limbed people, who, 
emerging from Germany, had settled for a time in the country 
we now call Belgium. Like their ancestors, they worshipped 
Woden and other heathen gods of the Teutons, while in their 
Salic law we see much to recall the German customs described 
by Tacitus five centuries before. 

The king was no longer elected by his people, for his office 
had become hereditary in the House of Meroveus, one of the 
heroes of the race. No woman, even of the Merovingian line, 
might succeed to the throne, nor prince whose hair had been 
shorn, since with the Franks flowing locks were a sign of royalty. 
Yet, in spite of the king's new position, the old spirit of equality 



56 The Rise of the Franks 

had not entirely disappeared. The assembly of freemen, still 
held once a year, had degenerated into a military review : but 
the warriors thus collected could demand that the coming 
campaign should meet with their approval. When a battle was 
over and victory obtained, the lion's share of the booty did not 
fall to the king, but the whole was divided by lot. 

A great part of the Salic law was really a tariff of violent acts, 
with the fine that those who had committed them must pay, so 
much for shooting a poisoned arrow, even if it missed its mark ; 
so much for wounding another in the head, or for cutting off his 
nose, or his great toe, or, worst of all, for damaging his second 
finger, so that he could no longer draw the bowstring. 

The underlying principle of this code was different from that 
of the Roman law, which set up a certain standard of right, 
inflicting penalties on those who fell short of it. Thus the 
Roman citizen who murdered or maimed his neighbour would 
be punished because he had dared to do what the state con- 
demned as a crime. The Frank, in a similar case, would be fined 
by the judges of his tribe, and the money paid as compensation 
to the person, or the relations of the person, whom he had 
wronged : the idea being, not to appease the anger of the state, 
but to remove the resentment of the injured party. 

For this purpose each Frank had his wergeld, literally his 
'worth-gold' or the sum of money at which, according to his 
rank, his life was valued, beginning with the nobles of the king's 
palace and descending in a scale to the lowest freeman. When 
the Franks left Belgium and advanced, conquering, into northern 
Gaul, they also fixed wergelds for their Roman subjects ; but 
rated them at only half the value of their own race. The 
wergeld oi a Frankish freeman was two hundred gold pieces, of 
a Roman only one hundred. 

By the beginning of the sixth century, when the Franks were 
well established in Gaul, the management of their important 
tribal affairs had passed entirely into the hands of the nobles 
surrounding the king. These bore such titles as Major Domus 
or 'Mayor of the Palace', at first only a steward, but later the 
chief minister of the crown ; the ' Seneschal ' or head of the 



Clovis, King of the Franks $7 

royal household; the 'Marshal' or Master of the Stables; the 
' Chamberlain ' or chief servant of the bedchamber. 

The most famous of the Merovingian kings, as the descen- 
dants of Merovius were called, was Clovis, who established the 
Frankish capital at Paris. He and his tribe, though pagans, 
were on friendly terms with the Roman inhabitants of northern 
Gaul, and especially with some of the Catholic clergy. When 
Clovis sacked the town of Soissons he tried to save the church 
plate, and especially a vase of great beauty that he knew St. 
Remi, Bishop of Reims, highly valued. ' Let it be put amongst 
my booty,' he said to his soldiers, intending to give it to the 
bishop later ; but one of them answered him insolently, ' Only 
that is thine which falls to thy share by lot,' and with his axe he 
shivered the vase into a thousand pieces. 

Clovis concealed his fury at the moment, but he did not forget, 
and a year afterwards, when he was reviewing his troops, he 
noticed the same man who had opposed his will. Stepping 
forward, he tore the fellow's weapons from his grasp and threw 
them on the ground, saying, ' No arms are worse cared for than 
thine ! ' The soldier stooped to pick them up, and Clovis, raising 
his battle-axe high in the air, brought it down on the bent head 
before him with the comment, ! Thus didst thou to the vase at 
Soissons ! ' 

Clovis married a Christian princess, Clotilda, a niece of the 
Burgundian king, and, at her request, he allowed their eldest 
child to be baptized, but for a long time he refused to become a 
Christian himself. One day, however, when in the midst of 
a battle in which his warriors were so hard pressed that they had 
almost taken to flight, he cried aloud — 'Jesus Christ, thou whom 
Clotilda doth call the Son of the Living God ... I now devoutly 
beseech thy aid, and I promise if thou dost give me victory over 
these my enemies . . . that I will believe in thee and be baptized 
in thy name, for I have called on my own gods and they have 
failed to help me.' 

Shortly afterwards the tide of battle turned, the Franks rallied, 
and Clovis obtained a complete victory. Remembering his 
promise, he went to Reims, and there he and three thousand of 



58 The Rise of the Franks 

his warriors were received into the Catholic Church. ' Bow thy 
head low,' said St. Remi who baptized the King, ' henceforth 
adore that which thou hast burned and burn that which thou 
didst formerly adore.' 

When he became a Catholic, Clovis had no idea that he had 
altered the whole future of his race, for to him it seemed merely 
that he had fulfilled the bargain he had made with the Christian 
God. He did not change his ways, but pursued his ambi- 
tions as before, now by treachery and now by force. It was 
his determination to make himself supreme ruler over all the 
Franks, and in the case of another branch, the Ripuarians, he 
began by secretly persuading their heir to the kingly title, the 
young prince Chloderic, to kill his father and seize the royal 
coffers. 

Chloderic, fired by the idea of becoming powerful, did so and 
wrote exultingly to Clovis, ' My father is dead and his wealth 
is mine. Let some of thy men come hither, and that of his 
treasure which pleaseth them I will send thee.' 

Ambassadors from the Salians duly arrived, and Chloderic led 
them secretly apart and showed them his money, running his 
hand through the pieces of gold that lay on the surface of the 
coffer. The men begged him to thrust his arm in deep that they 
might judge how great his wealth really was, and as he bent to 
do so, one of them struck him a mortal wound from behind. 
Then they fled. Thus by treachery died both father and son ; 
but Clovis unblushingly denied to the Ripuarian Franks that he 
had been in any way responsible. 

' Chloderic murdered his father, and he hath been assassinated 
by I know not whom. I am no partner in such deeds, for it is 
against the law to take the life of relations. Nevertheless, 
since it has happened, I offer you this advice, that you should 
put yourselves under my protection.' 

The Ripuarian Franks were without a leader, and like all 
barbarians they worshipped success ; so, believing that Clovis 
would surely lead them to victory, they raised him on their 
shields and hailed him as king. 

' Each day God struck down the enemies of Clovis under his 



Clovis, King of the Franks 59 

hand/ says Bishop Gregory of Tours, describing these events, 
'and enlarged his kingdom, because he went with an upright 
heart before the Lord and did the things that were pleasing in 
His sight.' It is startling to find a bishop pass such a verdict 
on a career of treachery and murder, the more that Gregory of 
Tours was no cringing court-flatterer but a priest with a high 
sense of duty who dared, when he believed it right, to oppose 
some of the later Frankish kings even at the risk of his life. 
Yet it must be remembered that a sense of honour was not 
understood by barbarians, except in a very crude form. They 
believed it was clever to outwit their neighbours, while to murder 
them was so ordinary as to excite little or no comment, save the 
infliction of a wergeld if the crime could be brought home. 
Centuries of the civilizing influence of Christianity were needed 
before the men and women of these fierce tribes could accept the 
Christian principles of truth, justice, and mercy in anything like 
their real spirit. 

The Romans in Gaul had almost given up expecting anything 
but brutality from their invaders if they aroused their enmity, 
and therefore welcomed even the smallest sign of grace. Thus 
the protection that Clovis afforded to the Catholic Church, after 
her years of persecution, blinded their eyes to many of his vices. 
When Clovis had made himself master of the greater part of 
northern Gaul, he determined to strike a blow at the Visigoths 
in the south. 'It pains me,' he said to his followers, 'to see 
Arians in a part of Gaul. Let us march against these heretics 
with God's aid and gain their country for ourselves.' 

Probably he was sincere in his dislike of heresy, but it was a 
politic attitude to adopt, for it meant that wherever he and his 
warriors marched they would find help against the Burgundians 
and Visigoths amongst the orthodox Roman population. It 
seemed to the latter that Clovis brought with him something ot 
the glory of the vanished Roman Empire, kept alive by the 
Catholic Church and now revived through her in this her latest 
champion. 

In a fierce battle near Poitiers, Clovis defeated the Visigoths 
and drove them out of Aquitaine, leaving them merely narrow 



60 The Rise of the Franks 

strips of territory along the Mediterranean seaboard and on 
either slope of the Pyrenees. He also fought against the 
Burgundians and, though he was not so successful, reduced 
them temporarily to submission. When he died, at the age 
of forty-five, he was master of three-quarters of Gaul, and had 
stamped the name of his race for ever on the land he had invaded. 

His work of conquest was continued by his successors and 
reached its zenith in the time of King Dagobert, who lived at 
the beginning of the seventh century. Dagobert has been called 
'the French Solomon', because, like the Jewish king, he was 
world-famed for his wisdom and riches. Not content with 
maintaining his power over Gaul to the west of the Rhine, he 
fought against the Saxon and Frisian tribes in Germany and 
forced them to pay tribute. At last his Empire stretched from 
the Atlantic to the mountains of Bohemia ; the Duke of Brittany, 
who had hitherto remained independent of the Franks, came to 
offer his allegiance, while the Emperor of Constantinople sought 
a Frankish alliance. 

A chronicler of the day, speaking of Dagobert, says, ' He was 
a prince terrible in his wrath towards traitors and rebels. He 
held the royal sceptre firmly in his grasp, and like a lion he 
sprang upon those who would foment discord. ' 

Another account describes his journeys through his kingdom, 
and how he administered justice with an even hand, not alto- 
gether to the joy of tyrannical landowners. ' His judgements 
struck terror into the hearts of the bishops and of the great 
men, but it overwhelmed the poor with joy. ' 

In the troublous years that were to come his reign stood out 
in people's minds as an age of prosperity, but already, before the 
death of the king, this prosperity had begun to wane. Luxury 
sapped the vigour of a once-powerful mind and body, and the 
authority that ' the French Solomon ' relaxed in his later years 
through self-indulgence was never regained by his successors. 

With the contemptuous title ' The Sluggard Kings ' the last 
rulers of the Merovingian line have passed down to posterity. 
Few were endowed with any ability or even ambition to govern, 
the majority died before they had reached manhood looking 



The Carolingians 61 

already like senile old men ; and the power that should have 
been theirs passed into the hands of the Mayors of the Palace 
who administered their demesnes. On state occasions, indeed, 
they were still shown to their subjects, as they jolted to the 
place of assembly in a rough cart drawn by oxen ; but the 
ceremony over, they returned to their royal villas and insigni- 
ficance. ' Nothing was left to the king save the name of king, 
the flowing locks, the long beard. He sat on his throne and 
played at government, gave audiences to envoys, and_ dismissed 
them with the answers with which he had been schooled.' 

It was a situation that could only last so long as the name 
'Meroveus' retained its spell over the Franks; but the day 
came when the spell was broken, and a race of stronger fibre, 
the Carolingians, usurped the royal title. The heads of this 
family had for generations held the office of ' Mayor of the 
Palace ' in the part of Gaul between the Meuse and the Lower 
Rhine, then called Austrasia. It was their duty to administer 
the royal demesnes in this large district, that is, to see that the 
laws were obeyed, to superintend the cultivation of the soil, 
and to collect a share of the various harvests as a revenue for 
the king. 

This was more important work than it may sound to modern 
ears ; for in the early Middle Ages the majority of people, unlike 
men and women to-day, lived in the country. Ever since the 
decay of the Roman Empire, when the making of roads was 
neglected and the imperial grain-fleets disappeared from the 
Mediterranean, the problem of carrying merchandise and food 
from one part of Europe to another had grown steadily more 
acute. As commerce and industry languished, towns ceased to 
be centres of population and became merely strongholds where 
the neighbourhood could find refuge when attacked by its 
enemies. People preferred to spend their ordinary life in vil- 
lages in the midst of fields, where they could grow corn and 
barley, or keep their own sheep and oxen, and if the crops failed 
or their beasts were smitten by disease a whole province might 
suffer starvation. 

The Mayor of the Palace must guard the royal demesnes, 



62 The Rise of the Franks 

as far as possible, from the ravages of weather, wolves, or 
lawless men, for the King of the Franks, as much as any of 
his subjects, depended on the harvests and herds for his 
prosperity rather than on commerce or manufactures. By 
the end of the seventh century the Mayors of Austrasia had 
ceased to interest themselves merely in local affairs and had 
begun to extend their authority over the whole of France. 
Nominally, they acted in the name of the Merovingian kings, 
but once when the throne fell vacant they did not trouble to fill 
it for two years. The Franks made no protest : it was to their 
mayors, not to their kings, that they now turned whether in 
search of good government or daring national exploits. 

The Carolingian Charles 'Martel', Charles 'the Hammer', 
was a warrior calculated to arouse their profound admiration. 
' He was a Herculean warrior,' says an old chronicle, 'an ever- 
victorious prince . . . who triumphed gloriously over other 
princes, and kings, and peoples, and barbarous nations : in so 
much that, from the Slavs to the Frisians and even to the 
Spaniards and Saracens, there were none who rose up against 
him that escaped from his hand, without prostrating themselves 
in the dust before his empire.' 

It was Charles Martel who saved France from falling under 
the yoke of the Saracens, a race of Arabian warriors who, cross- 
ing from Africa at the Strait of Gibraltar, subdued in one short 
campaign three-quarters of Spain. Describing the first great 
victory over the Gothic King Rodrigo at Guadalete, the Governor 
of Africa wrote to his master the Caliph, ' O Commander of 
the Faithful, these are no common conquests ; they are like the 
meeting of the nations on the Day of Judgement' 

Puffed up with the glory they had gained, the Saracens, who 
were followers of the Prophet Mahomet, believed that they had 
only to advance for Christian armies to run away ; and over the 
Pyrenees they swept in large bands, seizing first one strong- 
hold on the Mediterranean coast and then another. Before 
this invasion Charles Martel had been engaged in a quarrel 
with the Duke of Aquitaine, but now they hastily made friends 
and on the field of Poitiers joined their forces to stem the 



Pepi] 



in, King of the Franks 63 

Saracen tide. So terrible was the battle, we are told, that 
over three hundred thousand Saracens fell before the Frankish 
warriors ' inflexible as a block of ice '. The number is almost 
certainly an exaggeration, and so also is the claim that the victors, 
by forcing the remnant of the Mahometan army to retreat to- 
wards the Pyrenees in hasty flight, saved Europe for Christianity. 
Even had the decision of the battle been reversed, the Moors 
would have found the task of holding Spain in the years to 
come quite sufficient to absorb all their energies. Indeed, their 
attacks on Gaul were, from the first, more in the nature of gigantic 
raids than of invasions with a view to settlement, though at the 
time their ferocity made them seem of world-wide importance. 

Thus it was only natural that the Mayor of the Palace, to 
whom the victory was mainly due, became the hero of Chris- 
tendom. The Pope, who was at that time trying to defend Rome 
from the King of the Lombards, sent to implore his aid ; but 
Charles knew that his forces had been weakened by their struggle 
with the Saracens and dared not undertake so big a campaign. 

Some years later his son, Pepin ' the Short ' (751-68), who had 
succeeded him, received the suggestion with a different answer. 
Pepin, as his nickname shows, was short in stature, but he was 
powerfully built and so strong that with a single blow of his axe 
he once cut off the head of a lion. Energetic and shrewd, he 
saw a way of turning the Pope's need of support against the 
Lombards to his own advantage. He therefore sent Frankish 
ambassadors to Rome to inquire whether it was not shameful 
for a land to be governed by kings who had no authority. The 
Pope, who was anxious to please Pepin, replied discreetly, ' He 
who possesses the authority should doubtless possess the title also.' 

This was exactly what the Mayor of the Palace had expected 
and wished, and the rest of the story may be told in the words 
of the old Frankish annals for the year 751 : ' In this year 
Pepin was named king of the PVanks with the sanction of the 
Popes, and in the city of Soissons he was anointed with the 
holy oil . . . and was raised to the throne after the custom of the 
Franks. But Childeric, who had the name of king, was shorn 
of his locks and sent into a monastery.' 



64 The Rise of the Franks 

The last of the Merovingians had vanished into the oblivion 
of a cloister, and Pepin the Carolingian was ruler of France. 
With the Pope's blessing he had achieved his ambition, and 
fortune soon enabled him to repay his debt, mainly, as it 
happened, at another's expense. 

In the last chapter we described the effect of the Lombard 
invasion of Italy, and how that Teutonic race sank its roots deep 
in the heart of the peninsula, leaving a Greek fringe along the 
coasts that still considered itself part of the Eastern Empire. 
Rome in theory belonged to this fringe, but in reality the Popes 
hated the imperial authority almost as much as the aggressions 
of Lombard king and dukes, and struggled to free themselves 
from its yoke. 

When Pepin, his own ambition satisfied, turned his attention 
to the Pope's affairs, the Lombards had just succeeded in over- 
running the Exarchate of Ravenna, the seat of the imperial 
government in Italy. Collecting an army, the King of the 
Franks crossed the Alps without encountering any opposition, 
marched on Pavia, the Lombard capital, and struck such terror 
into his enemies that, almost without fighting, they agreed to the 
terms that he dictated. 

Legally, he should have at once commanded the restoration 
of the Exarchate to the Empire, but there was no particular 
reason why Pepin should gratify Constantinople, while he had 
a very strong inclination to please Rome. He therefore told 
the Lombards to give the Exarchate to Stephen II, who was 
Pope at that time, and this they faithfully promised to do ; but, 
as he turned homewards, they began instead to oppress the 
country round Rome, preventing food from entering the city 
and pillaging churches. 

Pepin was very angry when he heard the news. Once more 
he descended on Italy, and this time the Lombards were com- 
pelled to keep their word, and the Papacy received the first of 
its temporal possessions, ratified by a formal treaty that declared 
the exact extent of the territory and the Papal rights over it. 
This was an important event in mediaeval history, for it meant 
that henceforward the Pope, who claimed to be the spiritual 



The Temporal Power of the Papacy 65 

head of Christendom, would .be also an Italian prince with 
recognized lands and revenues, and therefore with private 
ambitions concerning these. It would be his instinct to distrust 
any other ruler in the peninsula who might become powerful 
enough to deprive him of these lands ; while he would always 
be faced, when in difficulties, by the temptation to use his 
spiritual power to further purely worldly ends. On the way in 
which Popes dealt with this problem of their temporal and 
spiritual power, much of the future history of Europe was to 
depend. 

Pepin, in spite of his shrewdness, had no idea of the troubles 
he had sown by his donation. Well pleased with the generosity 
he had found so easy, with the title of ' Patrician ' bestowed on 
him by the Pope, and perhaps still more by the spoils that he 
and his Franks had collected in Lombardy, he left Italy, and 
was soon engaged in other campaigns nearer home against the 
Saracens and rebellious German tribes. In these he continued 
until his death in 768. 



VII 

MAHOMET 

Christianity, first preached by humble fishermen in Palestine, 
had become the foundation of life in mediaeval Europe. Some 
three hundred years after Constantine the Great had made this 
possible another religion, 'Islam', destined to be the rival of 
Christianity, was also born in the East, in Arabia, a narrow strip 
of territory lying between the Red Sea and miles of uninhabit- 
able desert. 

On the sea-coast of Arabia were some harbours, inland a few 
fertile oases, where towns of low, white stone houses and mud 
hovels had sprung into being ; but from the very nature of the 
soil and climate the Arabs were not drawn to manufacture goods 
or grow corn. Instead they preferred a wanderer's life, to tend 
the herds of horses or sheep that ranged the peninsula in search 
of water and pasturage, or if more adventurous to guard the 
caravans of camels that carried the silks and spices of India to 
Mediterranean seaports. These caravans had their regular 
routes, and every merchant a band of armed men to protect his 
goods and drive off robbers along the way. Only in the ' Sacred 
Months', the time of the sowing of seeds in the spring and at 
the autumn harvest, were such convoys of goods safe from attack ; 
for then, and then only, every Arab believed, according to the 
traditions of his forefathers, that peace was a duty, and that 
a curse would fall on him who dared to break it. 

The Arab, like all Orientals, was superstitious. He wor- 
shipped 'Allah', the all supreme God, but he accepted also 
a variety of other gods, heavenly bodies, spirits and devils, 
stones and idols. One of the most famous Arabian sanctuaries 
was a temple at Mecca called the ' Ka'bah ', where a black stone 
had been built into the wall that pilgrims would come from long 



The Young Mahomet 67 

distances to kiss and worship. Amongst the youths of the town 
who saw this ceremony and himself took part in the religious 
processions was an orphan lad, Mahomet (576-632), brought 
up in the house of his uncle, Abu Talib. 

Mahomet was handsome and strong : he had looked after 
sheep on the edge of the desert, taken part in tribal fights, and 
from the age of twelve wandered with caravans as far as the 
sea-coast. What distinguished him from his companions was 
not his education, nor any special skill as a warrior, but his 
quickness of observation, his tenacious memory, and his gift for 
bending others to his will. Unable to read, he could only gain 
knowledge by word of mouth, and wherever he went, amongst 
the colonies of the Jews who were the chief manufacturers in the 
towns, or lying beside the camp fires of the caravans at night, 
he would keep his ears open and store up in his mind all the 
tales that he heard. In this way he learned of the Jewish 
religion and a garbled version of Christianity. Soon he knew 
the stories of Joseph and of Abraham and some of the sayings 
of Christ, and the more he thought over them the more he grew 
to hate the idol worship of the Arabs round him. 

When he was twenty-five Mahomet married a rich widow, 
Khadijah, whose caravan he had successfully steered across the 
desert; and in this way he became a man of independent means, 
possessing camels and horses of his own. Khadijah was some 
years older than Mahomet, but she was a very good wife to him, 
and brought him not only a fortune but a trust and belief in his 
mission that he was to need sorely in the coming years. To her 
he confided his hatred of idol-worship, and also to Abu Bakr, the 
wealthy son of a cloth merchant of Mecca, who had fallen under 
his influence. Mahomet declared that God, and later the Angel 
Gabriel, had appeared to him in visions and had given him 
messages condemning the superstitions of the Arabs. 

'There is but one God, Allah . . . and Mahomet is His Prophet.' 

This was the chief message, received at first with contempt 
but destined to be carried triumphant in the centuries to come 
right to the Pyrenees and the gates of Vienna. 

The visions, or trances, during which Mahomet received his 

F 2 



68 Mahomet 

messages, afterwards collected in the sacred book, the Koran, 
are thought by many to have been epileptic fits. His face 
would turn livid and he would cover himself with a blanket, 
emerging at last exhausted to deliver some command or 
exhortation. Later it would seem that he could produce this 
state of insensibility at will and without much effort, whenever 
questions were asked, indeed, in answering which he required 
divine guidance. Much of the teaching in the Koran was based, 
like Judaism or Christianity, on far higher ideals than the fetish 
worship of the Arabs : it emphasized such things as the duty of 
almsgiving, the' discipline that comes of fasting, the necessity of 
personal cleanliness, while it forbade the use of wine, declaring 
drunkenness a crime. 

With regard to the position of women the Koran could show 
nothing of the chivalry that was to develop in Christendom 
through the respect felt by Christians for the mother of Christ 
and for the many women martyrs and saints who suffered 
during the early persecutions. Moslems were allowed by the 
Koran to have four wives (Mahomet permitted himself ten), and 
these might be divorced at their husband's pleasure without any 
corresponding right on their part. On the other hand the 
power of holding property before denied was now secured to 
women, and the murder of female children that had been 
a practice in the peninsula was sternly abolished. 

As the years passed more and more ' Surahs ', or chapters, were 
added to the Koran, but at first the Prophet's messages were 
few and appealed only to the poor and humble. When the 
Meccans, told by Abu Bakr that Mahomet was a prophet, came 
to demand a miracle as proof, he declared that there could be no 
greater miracle than the words he uttered ; but this to the 
prosperous merchants seemed merely crazy nonsense. When 
he went farther, and, acting on what he declared was Allah's 
revelation, destroyed some of the local idols, contempt changed 
to anger ; for the inhabitants argued that if ' Ka'bah ' ceased to be 
a sanctuary their trade with the pilgrims who usually came to 
Mecca would cease. 

For more than eight years, while the Prophet maintained his 



The Hijrah 69 

unpopular mission, his poorer followers were stoned and beaten, 
and he himself shunned. Perhaps it seems odd that in such 
a barbarous community he was not killed ; but though Arabia 
possessed no government in any modern sense, yet a system of 
tribal law existed that went far towards preventing promiscuous 
murder. Each man of any importance belonged to a tribe that 
he was bound to support with his sword, and that in turn was 
responsible for his life. If he were slain the tribe would exact 
vengeance or demand 'blood money' from the murderer. Now 
the head of Mahomet's tribe was Abu Talib, his uncle, and, 
though the old man refused to accept his nephew as a prophet, 
he would not allow him to be molested. 

In spite of persecution the number of believers in Mahomet's 
doctrines grew, and when some of those who had been driven 
out of the city took refuge with the Christian King of Abyssinia 
and were treated by him with greater kindness than the pagan 
Arabs, the Meccans at home became so much alarmed that 
they adopted a new policy of aggression. Henceforward both 
Mahomet and his followers, the hated 'Moslems', or 'heathen' 
as they were nicknamed in the Syriac tongue, were to be out- 
laws, and no one might trade with them or give them food. 

In an undisciplined community like an Arabian town such an 
order would not be strictly kept, and for three years Mahomet 
was able to defy the ban, but every day his position grew more 
precarious and the sufferings of his followers from hunger and 
poverty increased. During this time too both Khadijah and 
Abu Talib died, and the Prophet, almost overwhelmed with his 
misfortunes, was only kept from doubting his mission by the faith 
and loyalty of those who would not desert him. ■ 

Weary of trying to convert Mecca he sent messengers through 
Arabia to find if there were any tribe that would welcome 
a prophet, and at last he received an invitation to go to Yathrib. 
This was a larger town than Mecca, farther to the north, and was 
populated mainly by Jewish tribes who hated the Arabian idol- 
worshippers and welcomed the idea of a teacher whose views 
were based largely on Jewish traditions. 

In 622, therefore, Mahomet and his followers fled secretly from 



jo Mahomet 

Mecca to Yathrib, later called Medinah or 'the city of the 
Prophet'; and this date of the 'Hijrah' or 'Flight', when the 
new religion broke definitely with old Arab traditions, was taken 
as the first year of the Moslem calendar, just as Christians 
reckon their time from the birth of Christ. Here in Medinah 
was built the first mosque, or temple of the new faith, a faith 
christened by its believers Islam, a word meaning 'surrender', 
for in surrender to Allah and to the will of his Prophet lay the 
way of salvation to the Moslem Garden of Paradise. 

So beautiful to the Arab mind were the very material luxuries 
and pleasures with which Mahomet entranced the imagination of 
believers that in later years his soldiers would fling themselves 
recklessly against their enemies' spears in order to gain 
Paradise the quicker. The alternative for the unbeliever was 
Hell, the everlasting fires of the Old Testament that so terrified 
the minds of mediaeval Christians ; and between Paradise and 
Hell there was no middle way. 

The Jews in Medinah were, like Mahomet, worshippers ol 
one God, but they soon showed that they were not prepared to 
accept this wandering Arab as Jehovah's final revelation to man. 
They demanded miracles, sneered at the Koran, which they 
declared was a parody of their own Scriptures, and took advan- 
tage of the poverty of the refugees to drive hard bargains with 
them. At length it became obvious that the Moslems must find 
some means of livelihood or else Medinah, like Mecca, must be 
left for more friendly soil. 

Pressed by circumstances Mahomet evolved a policy that was 
destined to overthrow the tribal system of government in Arabia. 
Mention has been made already of the caravans of camels that 
journeyed regularly from south to north of the peninsula, bearing 
merchandise. Many of these caravans were owned by wealthy 
Meccans, whose chief trade route passed quite close by the town 
of Medinah, and they were protected and guarded by members 
of the tribe of Abu Talib and of other families whose relations 
were serving with the Prophet. 

At first, when Mahomet commanded that these caravans should 
be attacked and looted, his followers looked aghast, for the 



Battle of Badr 71 

sacredness of tribes from attack by kinsmen was a tradition they 
had inherited for generations. Their Prophet at once proved 
to them by a message from Allah that a new relationship had 
been formed stronger than the ties of blood, namely, the bond of 
faith, and that to the believer the unbeliever, whether father or 
son, was accursed. In the same way, when the first marauding 
expeditions were unsuccessful because the caravans attacked 
were too well guarded, Mahomet explained away the 'Sacred 
Months' and chose in future that very time for his warriors to 
descend upon unsuspecting merchants. 

The Meccans, outraged by what they somewhat naturally con- 
sidered treachery, soon dispatched some thousand men, de- 
termined to make an end of the Prophet and his followers ; and 
at Badr, not very far from the coast on the trade route between 
the two towns, this large force encountered three hundred 
Moslems commanded by Mahomet. It is difficult to gain a clear 
impression of the battle, for romance and legend have rendered 
real details obscure ; but, either by superior generalship, the 
valour and discipline of the Moslems as compared to the conduct 
of their forces, or, as was later stated, through the agency of 
angels sent by Allah from Heaven, the vastly more numerous 
Meccan force was utterly put to rout. 

Moslems refer to the battle of Badr as ' the Day of Deliverance '» 
for though, not long afterwards, they in their turn were defeated 
by the Meccans, yet never again were they to become mere dis- 
credited refugees. Success pays, and, with the victory of Badr 
as a tangible miracle to satisfy would-be converts, Mahomet 
soon gained a large army of warriors, whom his personality 
moulded into obedience to his will. 

The Jews who had mocked him had soon cause to repent, for 
Mahomet, remembering their jibes and the petty persecution to 
which they had subjected his followers, adopted a definitely 
hostile attitude towards them. Taking advantage of the reluct- 
ance with which these Jews had shared in the defence of Medinah 
and in the throwing-up of earthworks to protect it, when the 
Meccans came to besiege it in the year 5 of the new calendar, 
Mahomet as soon as the siege was raised obtained his revenge. 



72 Mahomet 

Those Jews of the city who still refused to recognize him as 
a Prophet were slaughtered, their wives and children sold into 
slavery. The teaching and ritual of the Koran also, once care- 
fully based on the Scriptures of Israel, began to cast off this 
influence, and where of old Mahomet had commanded his 
followers to look towards Jerusalem in their prayers, he now 
bade them kneel with their faces towards Mecca. 

In this command may be seen his new policy of conciliation 
towards his native town ; for Mahomet recognized that in the 
city of Mecca lay the key to the peninsula, and he was deter- 
mined to establish his power there, if not by force then by 
diplomacy. After some years of negotiation he persuaded those 
who had driven him into exile not so much of the truth of his 
teaching as of the certainty that his presence would bring more 
pilgrims than ever before to visit the shrine of Ka'bah. 

In a.d. 630 he entered Mecca in triumph, and the worship of 
Islam was established in the heart of Arabia. As a concession 
to the Meccans, divine revelation announced that the sacred 
black stone built into the temple wall had been hallowed by 
Abraham, and was therefore worthy of veneration. 

Instead of a general scheme of revenge only two of Mahomet's 
enemies were put to death ; and it is well to remember that, 
judged by the standards of his age and race, the Prophet was no 
lover of cruelty. In his teaching he condemned the use of 
torture, and throughout his life he was nearly always ready to 
treat with his foes rather than slay them. Those amongst his 
enemies who refused him recognition as a Prophet while willing 
to acknowledge him as a ruler were usually allowed to live in 
peace on the payment of a yearly ransom diyided amongst the 
believers ; but in cases where he had met with an obstinate 
refusal or persistent treachery, as from the Jews of Medinah, 
Mahomet would put whole tribes to the sword. 

In 632 the Prophet of Islam died, leaving a group of Arabian 
tribes bound far more securely together by the faith he had 
taught them than they could have been by the succession of any 
royal house. ' Though Mahomet is dead, yet is Mahomet's 
God not dead.' 



The Kingdom of Persia 73 

While Mahomet was still an exile at Medinah it is evident 
that he already contemplated the idea of gaining the world for 
Islam. 'Let there be in you a nation summoning unto good,' 
says the Koran, and in token of this mission the Prophet, in the 
years following his Arabian victories, sent letters to foreign 
rulers to announce his ambition. Here is one to the chief of the 
Copts, a Christian race living in Egypt : 

'In the name of Allah . . . the Merciful. 

' From the Apostle of Allah to ... , Chief of the Copts. 
Peace be upon him who follows the guidance. Next I summon 
thee with the appeal to Islam : become a Moslem and thou shalt 
be safe. God shall give thee thy reward twofold. But if thou 
decline then on thee is the guilt of the Copts. O ye people of 
the Book come unto an equal arrangement between us and you 
that we should serve none save God, associating nothing with 
Him, and not taking one another for Lords besides God, — and 
if ye decline, then bear witness that we are Moslems.' 

Similar letters were sent to Chosroes, King of Persia, and to 
Heraclius, the Christian Emperor at Constantinople. The 
former tore the letter in pieces contemptuously, for at that time 
his kingdom extended over the greater part of Asia; Jerusalem, 
once the pride of the Eastern Empire, had fallen into his grasp ; 
while his armies were besieging Constantinople itself. A letter 
that he himself penned to the Christian Emperor shows his over- 
weening pride, and the depths into which Byzantium had fallen 
in the public regard : 

' Chosroes, Greatest of Gods, and Master of the whole earth, 
to Heraclius, his vile and insensate slave. Why do you still 
refuse to submit to our rule and call yourself a king? Have I 
not destroyed the Greeks ? You say that you trust in your God. 
Why has he not delivered out of my hand Caesarea, Jerusalem, 
Alexandria? and shall I not also destroy Constantinople ? But 
I will pardon your faults if you will submit to me, and come 
hither with your wife and children, and I will give you lands, 
vineyards, and olive groves, and look upon you with a kindly 
aspect. Do not deceive yourself with vain hope in that Christ, 
who was not even able to save himself from the Jews, who killed 



74 Mahomet 

him by nailing him to a cross. Even if you take refuge in the 
depths of the sea I shall stretch out my hand and take you, so 
that you shall see me whether you will or no.' 



Christendom was fortunate in Heraclius. Instead of con- 
templating either despair or surrender, he called upon the Church 
to summon all Christians to his aid, and by means of the gold 
and silver plate presented to him as a war loan by the bishops 
and clergy, and in command of a large army of volunteers, he 
beat back the Persians from the very gates of his capital. Not 
content with a policy of defence, he next invaded Asia, and at 
the battle of Nineveh utterly destroyed the hosts of Chosroes. 
The fallen King, deposed by his subjects, was forced to take 
refuge in the mountains, and later was thrown into a dungeon 
where he died of cold and starvation. 

Had the reign of Heraclius ended at this date, it would be re- 
membered as a glorious era in the history of Constantinople ; 
but unfortunately for his fame another foe was to make more 
lasting inroads on his Empire, already weakened by the Persian 
occupation. 

When the Emperor (610-41), like Chosroes, received 
Mahomet's letter, he is said to have read it with polite interest. 
It seemed to him that this fanatic Arab, who hated the Jews as 
much as the Christians did, might turn his successful sword not 
only against them but against the Persians. In this surmise 
Heraclius was right, for under Abu Bakr, now Caliph, or 
'successor', of Mahomet, since the Prophet had left no son, 
the Moslems invaded Persia. 

Unfortunately for Heraclius, they were equally bent on an 
aggressive campaign against the Christian Empire. ' There is 
but one God, Allah ! ' With this test, by which they could 
distinguish friend from foe, the Arab hosts burst through the 
gate of Syria, and at Yermuk encountered the imperial army 
sent by Heraclius to oppose them. The Greeks fought so 
stubbornly that at first it seemed that their disciplined valour 
must win. 'Is not Paradise before you? . . . Are not Hell and 
Satan behind ? ' cried the Arab leader to his fanatical hordes, 



Mahometan Victories y$ 

and in response to his words they rallied, broke the opposing 
lines by the sudden ferocity of their charge, and finally drove 
the imperial troops in headlong flight. 

After the battle of Yermuk Syria fell and Palestine was 
invaded. In 637 Jerusalem became a Moslem town, with a 
mosque standing where once had been the famous temple of 
Solomon. Mahomet had declared Jerusalem a sanctuary only 
second in glory to Mecca; and his followers with a toleration 
strange in that age left under Christian guardianship the Tomb 
of the Holy Sepulchre and other sacred sites. 

After Syria, Palestine; after Palestine, Egypt and the north 
African coast-line. The dying Heraclius heard nothing but the 
bitter news of disaster, and after his death the quarrels of his 
descendants increased the feebleness of Christian resistance, 
A spirit of unity might have carried the Moslem banners to the 
limits of the Eastern Empire, but in 656 the Caliph Othman was 
murdered, and the civil war that ensued enabled the Christian 
Emperor, Constans II, to negotiate peace. He had lost Tripoli. 
Syria, Egypt, and the greater part of Armenia to his foes, who 
had also succeeded in establishing a naval base in the Mediter- 
ranean that threatened the islands of Greece herself. In the 
north his borders were overrun by Bulgar and Slav tribes, 
while in Italy the Lombards maintained a perpetual struggle 
against his viceroy, the Exarch of Ravenna. 

Constans himself spent six years in Italy, the greater part in 
campaigns against the Lombards. He even visited Rome, but 
earned hatred there as elsewhere by his ruthless pillage of the 
West for the benefit of the East. Thus the Pantheon was 
stripped of its golden tiles J:o enrich Constantinople, and the 
churches of South Italy robbed of their plate to pay for his wars. 
At last a conspiracy was formed against him, and while enjoying 
the baths at Syracuse one of his servants struck him on the 
head with a marble soap-box and fractured his skull. Constans 
had been a brave and resolute Emperor of considerable military 
ability. His son, Constantine 'Pogonatus', or 'the bearded', 
inherited his gifts and drove back the Mahometans from 
Constantinople with so great a loss of men and prestige that the 



y6 Mahomet 

Caliph promised to pay a large sum of money as tribute every 
year in return for peace. 

Constantine ' Pogonatus ' died when a comparatively young 
man and was succeeded by his son, Justinian II, a lad of seven- 
teen, arrogant, cruel, and restless. Without any reason save 
ambition he picked a quarrel with the Moslem Caliph, marched 
a large army across his Eastern border, and, when he met with 
defeat, proceeded in his rage to execute his generals and soldiers, 
declaring that they had failed him. At home, in Constantinople, 
his ministers tortured the inhabitants in order to exact money 
for his treasury and filled the imperial dungeons with senators 
and men of rank suspected of disloyalty. 

Such a state of affairs could not last ; and the Emperor, who 
treated his friends as badly as his foes, was captured by one 
of his own generals, and, after having his nose cruelly slit, was 
exiled to the Crimea. Mutilation was supposed to be a final 
bar to the right of wearing the imperial crown ; but Justinian II 
was the type of man to be ignored only when dead. After some 
years of brooding over his wrongs he fled from the Crimea and 
took refuge with the King of the Bulgars. 

On his sea-journey a terrific storm arose that threatened to 
overwhelm both him and his crew. ' My Lord,' exclaimed one 
of his attendants, ' I pray you make a vow to God that if He 
spare you, you also will spare your enemies.' ' May God sink 
this vessel here and now,' retorted his master, 'if I spare a 
single one of them that falls into my hands,' and the words were 
an ill omen for his reign, that began once more in 705 when, 
with the aid of Bulgar troops and of treachery within the 
capital, Justinian II established himself once more in Constanti- 
nople. 

During six years the Empire suffered his tyranny anew ; and 
those who had previously helped to dethrone him were hunted 
down, tortured, and put to death. Like Nero of old he burned 
alive his political enemies, or he would order the nobles of his 
court who had offended him to be sewn up in sacks and thrown 
into the sea. At last another rebellion brought a final end to 
his reign, and that of the house of Heraclius, for both he and his 



Leo the Isaurian 77 

young son were murdered, and the Eastern Empire given up 
to anarchy. 

The man who did most to save Constantinople from the next 
Mahometan invasion was one of the military governors of the 
Empire called Leo the Isaurian. Conscious of his own ability 
he took advantage of his first successes to seize the imperial 
crown ; and then, having heard that the Mahometan fleet was 
moored off the shores of Asia Minor, he secretly sent a squadron 
of his own vessels that set the enemy's ships on fire. In the 
panic that ensued more than half the Arabian ships were sunk. 
About the same time a Mahometan land force was also defeated 
by the King of the Bulgars, who had allied himself with the 
Emperor on account of their mutual dread of an Eastern invasion. 
The result of these combined Christian victories was that the 
Caliph Moslemah, whose main forces were encamped beneath 
the walls of Constantinople, grew alarmed lest he should be cut 
off from support and provisions. He therefore raised the siege, 
embarked his army in what remained of his fleet, and retreated 
to his own kingdom, leaving the Christian capital free from acute 
danger from the East for another three hundred years. 

Elsewhere the Mahometans pursued their triumphant progress 
with little check. (After the fall of Carthage in 697 North Africa 
lay almost undefended before them ; and the half-savage tribes 
such as the Berbers, who lived on the borders of the desert, 
welcomed the new faith with its mission of conversion by the 
sword and prospects of plunder^) 

It was the Berbers who at the invitation, according to tradition, 
of a treacherous Spanish Governor, Count Julian, crossed the 
Strait of Gibraltar and descended on the plains of Andalusia. 

Spain, when the power of the Roman Empire snapped, had 
been invaded first by Vandals and then by Visigoths. The 
Vandals, as wejiave^se en, 1 passed on to Africa, while the 
Visigoths, like the Lombards in Italy, became converted to 
Christianity, and, falling under the influence of the civilization 
and luxury they saw around them, gradually adapted their 
government, laws, and way of life to the system and ideals of 

1 See p. 43. 



j 8 . Mahomet 

those whom they had conquered. Thus their famous Lex 
Visigothorum, or ' Law of the Visigoths ', was in reality the 
Roman code remodelled to suit the German settlers. 

In this new land the descendants of the once warlike Teutons 
acquired an indifference to the arts of war, and when their King 
Rodrigo had been killed at the disastrous battle of Guadelete 
and his army overthrown, they made little further resistance to 
the Saracen hordes except in the far northern mountains of the 
Asturias. From France we have seen 1 the Mahometans were 
beaten back by Charles Martel, and here, established in Spain 
and on the borders of the Eastern Empire, we must leave their 
fortunes for the time. If Mahomet's life is short and can be 
quickly told the story of how his followers attempted to establish 
their rule over Christendom is nothing else than the history 
of the foreign policy of Europe during mediaeval times. 

1 See p. 62. 



VIII 

CHARLEMAGNE 

Just before his death Pepin the Short had divided his lands 
between his two sons, Charles, who was about twenty-six, and 
Carloman, a youth some years younger. As they had no affec- 
tion for each other, this division did not work well. Carloman 
gave little promise of statesmanlike qualities : he was peevish 
and jealous, and easily persuaded by the nobles who surrounded 
him that his elder brother was a rival who intended to rob him 
of his possessions, it might be of his life. There seems to have 
been no ground for this suspicion ; but nevertheless he spent his 
days in trying to hinder whatever schemes Charles proposed ; 
and when he died, three years later, there was a general breath 
of relief. 

Enumerating the blessings that Heaven had bestowed on 
Charlemagne, a monk, writing to the King about this time, com- 
pleted his list with the candid statement : ' the fifth and not 
least that God has removed your brother from this earthly 
kingdom '. 

Charlemagne was exactly the kind of person to seize the 
fancy of the early Middle Ages. Tall and well built, with an 
eagle nose and eyes that flashed like a lion when he was angry 
so that none dared to meet their gaze, he excelled all his court 
in strength, energy, and skill. He could straighten out with 
his fingers four horseshoes locked together, lift a warrior fully 
equipped for battle to the level of his shoulder, and fell a horse 
and its rider with a single blow. 

It was his delight to keep up old national customs and to wear 
the Frankish dress with its linen tunic, cross-gartered leggings, 
and long mantle reaching to the feet. ' What is the use of these 
rags?' he once inquired contemptuously of his courtiers, point- 



80 Charlemagne 

ing to their short cloaks — 'Will they cover me in bed, or shield 
me from the wind and rain when I ride abroad ? ' 

This criticism was characteristic of the King. Intent on 
a multitude of schemes for the extension or improvement of his 
lands, and so eager to realize them that he would start on fresh 
ones when still heavily encumbered with the old, he was yet, 




for all his enthusiasm, no vague dreamer but a level-headed man 
looking questions in the face and demanding a practical answer. 
By the irony of fate it is the least practical and important task 
he undertook that has made his name world-famous ; for the 
story of Charlemagne and his Paladins, told in that greatest 
of mediaeval epics, the Chanson de Roland, exceeds to-day in 
popularity even the exploits of Arthur and the Knights of the 
Round Table. 



The Chanson de Roland 81 

This much is history — that Charlemagne, invited secretly by 
some discontented Emirs to invade Spain and attack the Caliph 
of Cordova, crossed the Pyrenees, and, after reducing several 
towns successfully, was forced to retreat. On his way back 
across the mountains his rearguard was cut off by Gascon 
mountaineers, and slaughtered almost to a man ; while he and 
the rest of his army escaped with difficulty. 

On this meagre and rather inglorious foundation poets of the 
eleventh century based a cycle of romance. Charlemagne is 
the central figure, but round him are grouped numerous 
' Paladins ', or famous knights, including the inseparable friends 
Oliver and Roland, Warden of the Breton Marches. After 
numerous deeds of glory in the land of Spain, the King, it was 
said, was forced by treachery to turn back towards the French 
mountains, and had already passed the summits, when Roland, 
in charge of the rearguard, found himself entrapped in the Pass 
of Roncesvalles by a large force of Gascons. His horn was 
slung at his side but he disdained to summon help from those 
in the van, and drawing his good sword ' Durenda ' laid about 
him valiantly. 

The Gascons fell back, dismayed by the vigorous resistance 
of the French ; but thirty thousand Saracens came to their aid, 
and the odds were now overwhelming. Oliver lay dead, and, 
covered with wounds, Roland fell to the ground also, but first 
of all he broke 'Durenda' in half that none save he might use 
this peerless blade. Putting his horn to his lips, with his dying 
breath he sounded a blast that was heard by Charlemagne in 
his camp more than eight miles away. ' Surely that is the horn 
of Roland?' cried the King uneasily, but treacherous courtiers 
explained away the sound ; and it was not till a breathless 
messenger came with the news of the reverse that he hastened 
towards the scene of battle. There in the pass, stretched on 
the ground amid the heaped-up bodies of their enemies, he found 
his Paladins — Roland with his arms spread in the form of 
a cross, his broken sword beside him : and seeing him the King 
fell on his knees weeping. ' Oh, right arm of thy Sovereign's 
body, Honour of the Franks, Sword of Justice .... Why did 



82 Charlemagne 

I leave thee here to perish ? How can I behold thee dead and 
not die with thee ? ' At last, restraining his grief, Charlemagne 
gathered his forces together; and the very sun, we are told, 
stood still to watch his terrible vengeance on Gascons and 
Saracens for the slaughter of Christians at Roncesvalles. 

The Chanson de Roland is one of the masterpieces of French 
literature. It is not history, but in its fiction lies a substantial 
germ of truth. Charlemagne in the early ninth century was 
what poets described him more than two hundred years later — 
the central figure in Christendom, the recognized champion of 
the Cross whether against Mahometans or pagans. 'Through 
your prosperity', wrote Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon monk and 
scholar who lived at his court, ' Christendom is preserved, the 
Catholic Faith defended, the law of justice made known to all 
men.' 

When the Popes sought help against the Lombards, it was to 
Charlemagne as to his father Pepin that they naturally turned. 
Charlemagne had hoped at the beginning of his reign to main- 
tain a friendship with King Didier of Lombardy and had even 
married his daughter, an alliance that roused the Pope of that 
date to demand in somewhat violent language : ' Do you not 
know that all the children of the Lombards are lepers, that the 
race is outcast from the family of nations ? For these there is 
neither part nor lot in the Heavenly Kingdom. May they broil 
with the devil and his angels in everlasting fire ! ' 

Charlemagne went his own way, in spite of papal denun- 
ciations ; but he soon tired of his bride, who was plain and feeble 
in health, and divorced her that he might marry a beautiful 
German princess. This was, of course, a direct insult to King 
Didier, who henceforth regarded the Frankish king as his enemy ; 
and Rome took care that the gulf once made between the 
sovereigns should not be bridged. 

In papal eyes the Lombards had really become accursed. It 
is true that they had been since the days of Gregory the Great 
orthodox Catholics, that their churches were some of the most 
beautiful in Italy, their monasteries the most famous for learning, 
and Pavia, their capital, a centre for students and men of letters. 



Invasion of Lombardy 83 

Their sin did not lie in heretical views, but in the position of 
their kingdom that now included not only modern Lombardy 
in the north, but also the Duchy of Spoletum in South Italy. 
Between stretched the papal dominions like a broad wall from 
Ravenna to the Western Mediterranean ; and on either side 
the Lombards chafed, trying to annex a piece of land here or 
a city there, while the Popes watched them, lynx-eyed, eager on 
their part to dispossess such dangerous neighbours, but unable 
to do so without assistance from beyond the Alps. 

Soon after the death of his younger brother Charlemagne 
was persuaded to take up the papal cause and invade Italy. 
At Geneva, where he held the 'Mayfield' or annual military 
review of his troops, he laid the object of his campaign before 
them, and was answered by their shouts of approval. 

It was a formidable host, for the Franks expected every man 
who owned land in their dominions to appear at these gatherings 
prepared for war. The rich would be mounted, protected by 
mail shirts and iron headpieces, and armed with sword and 
dagger; the poor would come on foot, some with bows and 
arrows, others with lance and shield, and the humblest of all 
with merely scythes or wooden clubs. Tenants on the royal 
demesnes must bring with them all the free men on their estates ; 
and while it was possible to obtain exemption the fine demanded 
was so heavy that few could pay it. 

When the army set out in battle array, it was accompanied 
by numerous baggage-carts, lumbering wagons covered with 
leather awnings, that contained enough food for three months 
as well as extra clothes and weapons. It was the general hope 
that on the return journey the wagons would be filled to over- 
flowing with the spoils of the conquered enemy. 

The Lombards had ceased, with the growth of luxury and 
comfortable town life, to be warriors like the Franks; and 
Charlemagne met with almost as little resistance as Pepin in 
past campaigns. After a vain attempt to hold the Western 
passes of the Alps, Didier and his army fled to Pavia, where 
they fortified themselves, leaving the rest of the country at the 
mercy of the invaders. 

g 2 



84 Charlemagne 

Prankish chroniclers in later years drew a realistic picture 
of Didier, crouched in one of the high towers of the city, awaiting 
in trembling suspense the coming of the 'terrible Charles'. 
Beside him stood Otger, a Frankish duke, who had been 
a follower of the dead Carloman and was therefore hostile to 
his elder brother. 'Is Charles in that great host?' demanded 
the King continually, as first the long line of baggage-wagons 
came winding across the plain, and then an army of the 'common- 
folk ', and after them the bishops with their train of abbots and 
clerks. Every time his companion answered him, ' No ! not yet ! ' 

'Then Didier hated the light of day. He stammered and 
sobbed and said, " Let us go down and hide in the earth from so 
terrible a foe." And Otger too was afraid ; well he knew the 
might and the wrath of the peerless Charles ; in his better days 
he had often been at court. And he said, " When you see the 
plain bristle with a harvest of spears, and rivers of black steel 
come pouring in upon your city walls, then you may look for the 
coming of Charles." While he yet spoke a black cloud arose 
in the West and the glorious daylight was turned to darkness. 
The Emperor came on ; a dawn of spears darker than night rose 
on the beleaguered city. King Charles, that man of iron, ap- 
peared ; iron his helmet, iron his armguards, iron the corselet 
on his breast and shoulders. His left hand grasped an iron 
lance . . . iron the spirit, iron the hue of his war steed. Before, 
behind, and at his side rode men arrayed in the same guise. 
Iron filled the plain and open spaces, iron points flashed back 
the sunlight. " There is the man whom you would see," said 
Otger to the king; and so saying he swooned away, like one 
dead.' 

In spite of this picture of Carolingian might, it took the 
Franks six months to reduce Pavia; and then Didier, at last 
surrendering, was sent to a monastery, while Charlemagne pro- 
claimed himself king of the newly acquired territories. During 
the siege, leaving capable generals to conduct it, he himself had 
gone to Rome, where he was received with feasting and joy. 
Crowds of citizens came out to the gates to welcome him, 
carrying palms and olive-branches, and hailed him as ' Patrician ' 
and ' Defender of the Church '. Dismounting from his horse 
he passed on foot through the streets of Rome to the cathedral ; 



Donation of Constantine 85 

and there, in the manner of the ordinary pilgrim, climbed the 
steps on his knees, until the Pope awaiting him at the top, raised 
and embraced him. From the choir arose the exultant shout, 
' Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.' 

A few days later, once more standing in St. Peter's, Charle- 
magne affixed his seal to the donation Pepin had given to the 
Church. The document was entered amongst the papal 
archives; but it has long since disappeared, and with it exact 
information as to the territories concerned. 

About this time the papal court produced another document, 
the so-called ' Donation of Constantine ', in which the first of 
the Christian emperors apparently granted to the Popes the 
western half of the Roman Empire. Centuries later this was 
proved to be a forgery, but for a long while people accepted it 
as genuine, and the power of the Popes was greatly increased. 
We do not know how much Charles believed in papal supremacy 
in temporal matters ; but throughout his reign his attitude to the 
Pope over Italian affairs was rather that of master to servant 
than the reverse. It was only when spiritual questions were 
under discussion that he was prepared to yield as if to a higher 
authority. 

When he had reduced Pavia Charlemagne left Lombardy to be 
ruled by one of his sons and returned to France ; but it was not 
very long before he was called back to Italy, as fresh trouble had 
arisen there. The cause was the unpopularity of Pope Leo III 
in Rome and the surrounding country, where turbulent nobles 
rebelled as often as they could against the papal government. 
One day, as Leo was riding through the city at the head 
of a religious procession, a band of armed men rushed out from 
a side street, separated him from his attendants, dragged him 
from his horse, and beat him mercilessly, leaving him half dead. 
It was even said that they put out his eyes and cut off his tongue, 
but that these were later restored by a miracle. 

Leo, at any rate, whole though shaken, succeeded in reaching 
Charlemagne's presence, and the King was faced by the problem 
of going to Rome to restore order. Had it been merely a matter 
of exacting vengeance, he would have found little difficulty with 



86 Charlemagne 

his army of stalwart Franks behind him ; but Leo's enemies 
were not slow in bringing forward accusations against their 
victim that they claimed justified their assault. Charlemagne 
was thus in an awkward position, for he was too honest a ruler to 
refuse to hear both sides, and his respect for the papal office 
could not blind him to the possibility of evil in the acts of the 
person who held it, especially in the case of an ambitious 
statesman like Leo III. 

He felt that it was his duty to sift the matter to the bottom ; 
and yet by what law could the King of France or even of Italy 
put Christ's vice-regent upon his trial and cross-examine him ? 

One way of dealing with this problem would have been to seek 
judgement at Constantinople as the seat of Empire, a final 
' appeal unto Caesar ' such as St. Paul had made in classical times : 
but, ever since Pepin the Short had given the Exarchate of 
Ravenna to the Pope instead of restoring it to Byzantine 
Emperors, relations with the East, never cordial, had grown 
more strained. Now they were at breaking point. The late 
Emperor, a mere boy, had been thrown into a dungeon and 
blinded by his mother, the Empress Irene, in order that she 
might usurp his throne ; and the Western Empire recoiled from 
the idea of accepting such a woman as arbiter of their destinies. 

Thus Charlemagne, forced to act on his own responsibility, 
examined the evidence laid before him and declared Leo innocent 
of the crimes of which he had b.een accused. In one sense it 
was a complete triumph for the Pope ; but Leo was a clear- 
sighted statesman and knew that the power to which he had been 
restored rested on a weak foundation. The very fact that he had 
been compelled to appeal for justice to a temporal sovereign 
lowered the office that he held in the eyes of the world ; and he 
possessed no guarantee that, once the Franks had left Rome, 
his enemies would not again attack him. Without a recognized 
champion, always ready to enforce her will, the Papacy remained 
at the mercy of those who chose to oppose or hinder her. 

In the dramatic scene that took place in St. Peter's Cathedral 
on Christmas Day, a. d. 800, Leo found a way out of his difficulties. 
Arrayed in gorgeous vestments, he said Mass before the High 



Foundation of Western Empire 87 

Altar, lit by a thousand candles hanging at the arched entrance 
to the chancel. In the half-gloom beyond knelt Charlemagne 
and his sons ; and at the end of the service Leo, approaching 
them with a golden crown in his hands, placed it upon the 
King's head. Instantly the congregation burst into the cry with 
which Roman emperors of old had been acclaimed at their 
accession. 'To Charles Augustus, crowned of God, the great 
and pacific Emperor, long life and victory ! ' ' From that time ', 
says a Frankish chronicle, commenting on this scene, ' there was 
no more a Roman Empire at Constantinople.' 

Leo had found his champion, and in anointing and crowning 
him had emphasized the dignity of his own office. He had also 
pleased the citizens of Rome, who rejoiced to have an Emperor 
again after the lapse of more than three centuries. Charlemagne 
alone was doubtful of the greatness that had been thrust upon 
him and accepted it with reluctance. He had troubles enough 
near home without embroiling himself with Constantinople ; but 
as it turned out the Eastern Empire was too busy deposing the 
Empress Irene to object actively to its rejection in the West ; and 
Irene's successors agreed to acknowledge the imperial rank 
of their rival in return for the cession of certain coveted lands on 
the Eastern Adriatic. 

Other sovereigns hastened to pay their respects to the new 
Emperor, and Charlemagne received several embassies in search 
of alliance from Haroun al-Raschid, the Caliph of Bagdad. 
Haroun al-Raschid ruled over a mighty empire stretching from 
Persia to Egypt, and thence along the North African coast to the 
Strait of Gibraltar. On one occasion he sent Charlemagne a 
present of a wonderful water-clock that, as it struck the hour of 
twelve, opened as many windows, through which armed horsemen 
rode forth and back again. Far more exciting in Western eyes 
was the unhappy elephant that for nine years remained the 
glory of the imperial court at Aachen. Its death, when they 
were about to lead it forth on an expedition against the northern 
tribes of Germany, is noted sadly in the national annals. 

Rulers less fortunate than Haroun al-Raschid sought not 
so much the friendship of the Western Emperor as his 



88 Charlemagne 

protection, and through his influence exiled kings of Wessex and 
Northumberland were able to recover their thrones. Most 
significant tribute of all to the honour in which Charlemagne's 
name was held was the petition of the Patriarch of Jerusalem 
that he would come and rescue Christ's city from the infidel. 
The message was accompanied by a banner and the keys of the 
Holy Sepulchre; but Charlemagne, though deeply moved 
by such a call to the defence of Christendom, knew that 
the campaign was beyond his power and put it from him. Were 
there not infidels to be subdued within the boundaries of his own 
Empire, fierce Saxon tribes that year after year made mock both 
of the sovereignty of the Franks and their religion ? 

The Saxons lived amongst the ranges of low hills between the 
Rhine and the Elbe. By the end of the eighth century, when 
other Teutonic races such as the Franks and the Bavarians had 
yielded to the civilizing influence of Christianity, they still 
cherished their old beliefs in the gods of nature and offered 
sacrifices to spirits dwelling in groves and fountains. The chief 
object of their worship was a huge tree trunk that they kept 
hidden in the heart of a forest, their priests declaring that the 
whole Heavens rested upon it. This Irminsul, or ( All-supporting 
pillar ', was the bond between one group of Saxons and another 
that led them to rally round their chiefs when any foreign army 
appeared on their soil ; though, if at peace with the rest of the 
world, they would fight amongst themselves for sheer love 
of battle. 

A part of the Saxon race had settled in the island of Britain, 
when the Roman authority weakened at the break-up of the 
Empire; and amongst the descendants of these settlers were 
some Christian priests who determined to carry the Gospel to 
the heathen tribes of Germany, men and women of their own 
race but still living in spiritual darkness. The most famous 
of these missionaries was St. Winifrith, or St. Boniface according 
to the Latin version of his name that means, ' He who brings 
peace.' 

About the time that Charles Martel was Duke of the Franks 
Boniface arrived in Germany and began to travel from one part 



St. Boniface 89 

of the country to another, explaining the Gospel of Christ, and 
persuading those whom he converted to build churches and 
monasteries. When he went to Rome to give an account of his 
work the Pope made him a bishop and sent him to preach 
in the Duchy of Bavaria. Later, as his influence increased and 
he gathered disciples round him, he was able to found not only 
parish churches but bishoprics with a central archbishopric 
at Mainz ; thus, long before Germany became a nation she 
possessed a Church with an organized government that belonged 
not to one but to all her provinces. 

Only in the north and far east of Germany heathenism still 
held sway ; and St. Boniface, after he had gone at the Pope's 
wish to help the Franks reform their Church, determined to make 
one last effort to complete his missionary work in the land 
he had chosen as his own. He was now sixty-five, but nothing 
daunted by the hardships and dangers of the task before him he 
set off with a few disciples to Friesland and began to preach to 
the wild pagan tribes who lived there. Before he could gain 
a hearing, however, he was attacked, and, refusing to defend 
himself, was put to death. 

Thus passed away 'the Apostle of Germany' and with him 
much of the kindliness of his message. Christianity was to come 
indeed to these northern tribes, but through violence and the 
sword rather than by the influence of a gentle life. Charlemagne 
had a sincere love of the Catholic Faith, whose champion he 
believed himself; but he considered that only folly and obstinacy 
could blind men's eyes to the truth of Christianity, and he was 
determined to enforce its doctrines by the sword if necessary. 

The Saxons, on the other hand, though if they were beaten in 
battle they might yield for a time and might promise to pay 
tribute to the Franks and build churches, remained heathens at 
heart. When an opportunity occurred, and they learned that the 
greater part of the Frankish army was in Italy or on the Spanish 
border, they would sally forth across their boundaries and drive 
out or kill the missionaries. Charlemagne knew that he could 
have no peace within his Empire until he had subdued the 
Saxons ; but the task he had set himself was harder than he had 



90 Charlemagne 

imagined, and it was thirty-eight years before he could claim that 
he had succeeded.* 

'The final conquest of the Saxons', says Eginhard, a scholar 
who lived at Charlemagne's court and wrote his life, 'would have 
been accomplished sooner but for their treachery. It is hard to 
tell how often they broke faith, surrendering to the King and 
accepting his terms, and then breaking out into wild rebellion 
once more.' Eginhard continues that Charlemagne's method 
was never to allow a revolt to remain unpunished but to set out 
at once with an army and exact vengeance. On one of these 
campaigns he succeeded in reaching the forest where the sacred 
trunk Irminsul was kept and set fire to it and destroyed it ; but 
the Saxons, though disheartened for the moment, soon rallied 
under the banner of a famous chief called Witikind. We know 
little of the latter except his undaunted courage that made him 
refuse for many years to submit to a foe so much stronger that 
he must obviously gain the final victory. 

Charlemagne, exasperated by repeated opposition, used every 
means to forward his aim. Sometimes he would bribe separate 
chieftains to betray their side ; but often he would employ 
methods of deliberate cruelty in order to strike terror into his foes. 
Four thousand five hundred Saxons who had started a rebellion 
were once cut off and captured by the Franks. They pleaded 
that Witikind, who had escaped into Denmark, had prompted 
them to act against their better judgement. ' If Witikind is not 
here you must pay the penalty in his stead,' returned the King 
relentlessly, and the whole number were put to the sword. 

At different times he transplanted hundreds of Saxon house- 
holds into the heart of France, and in the place of 'this great 
multitude ', as the chronicle describes them, he established 
Frankish garrisons. He also sent missionaries to build churches 
in the conquered territories and compelled the inhabitants to 
become Christians. 

Often the bishops and priests thus sent would have to fly 
before a sudden raid of heathen Saxons hiding in the neigh- 
bouring forests and marshes; and, lacking the courage of 
St. Boniface, a few would hesitate to return when the danger was 



Conquest of Saxon Tribes 91 

suppressed. ' What ought I to do ? ' cried one of the most 
timid, appealing to Charlemagne. ' In Christ's name go back to 
thy diocese/ was the stern answer. 

While the King expected the same obedience and devotion 
from church officials as from the captains in his army, he took 
care that they should not lack his support in the work he had set 
them to do. 

' If any man among the Saxons, being not yet baptized, shall 
hide himself and refuse to come to baptism, let him die the death.' 

' If any man despise the Lenten fast for contempt of Christian- 
ity, let him die the death.' 

'Let all men, whether nobles, free, or serfs, give to the 
Churches and the priests the tenth part of their substance and 
labour.' 

These ' capitularies ', or laws, show that Charlemagne was still 
half a barbarian at heart and matched pagan savagery with 
a severity more ruthless because it was more calculating. In the 
end Witikind himself, in spite of his courage, was forced 
to surrender and accept baptism, and gradually the whole 
of Saxony fell under the Frankish yoke. 

The Duchy of Bavaria, that had been Christian for many years, 
did not offer nearly so stubborn a resistance ; and after he had 
reduced both it and Saxony to submission, Charlemagne was 
ruler not merely in name but in reality of an Empire that included 
France, the modern Holland and Belgium, Germany, and the 
greater part of Italy. Some of the conquests he had made were 
to fall away, but Germany that had suffered most at his hands 
emerged in the end the greatest achievement of his foreign wars. 

He swept away the black deceitful night 
And taught our race to know the only light, 

wrote a Saxon monk of the ninth century, showing that already 
some of the bitterness had vanished. ' In a few generations ', 
says a modern writer, ' the Saxons were conspicuous for their 
loyalty to the Faith.' 

No story of Charlemagne would be true to life that omitted his 
harsh dealings with his Saxon foe ; and yet it would be equally 
unfair to paint him only as a warrior, mercilessly exterminating 



92 Charlemagne 

all who opposed him in barbaric fashion. Far more than 
a conqueror he was an empire-builder to whom war was not 
an end in itself, as to his Frankish forefathers, but a means 
towards the safeguarding of his realm. 

The forts and outworks that he planted along his boundaries, 
the churches that he built in the midst of hostile territory, 
belonged indeed to his policy of inspiring terror and awe : but 
Charlemagne had also other designs only in part of a military 
nature. Roads and bridges that should make a network 
of communication across the Empire, acting like channels 
of civilization in assisting transport and encouraging trade and 
intercourse : royal palaces that should become centres of justice 
for the surrounding country : monasteries that should shed the 
light of knowledge and of faith : all these formed part of his 
dream of a Roman Empire brought back to her old stately life 
and power. 

A canal joining the Rhine and Danube and thus making 
a continuous waterway between East and West was planned and 
even begun, but had to wait till modern times for its completion. 
Charlemagne possessed the vision and enterprise that did not 
quail before big undertakings, but he lacked the money and 
labour necessary for carrying them out. Unlike the Roman 
Emperors of classic times he had no treasury on whose taxes he 
could draw ; but depended, save for certain rents, on the revenues 
of his private estates that were usually paid ' in kind ', that is to 
say, not in coin but at the rate of so many head of cattle, or of so 
much milk, corn, or barley, according to the means of the tenant. 
Of these supplies he kept a careful account even to the number 
of hens on the royal farms and the quantity of eggs that they 
laid. Yet at their greatest extent revenues ' in kind ' could do 
little more than satisfy the daily needs of the palace. 

The chief debt that the Frankish nation owed to the state was 
not financial but military, the obligation of service in the field 
laid on every freeman. As the Empire increased in size this 
became so irksome that the system was somewhat modified. In 
future men who possessed less than a certain quantity of land might 
join together and pay one or two of their number, according to the 



Court of Charlemagne 93 

size of their joint properties, to represent them in the army 
abroad, while the rest remained at home to see to the cultivation 
of the crops. 

Charlemagne was very anxious to raise a body of labourers 
from each district to assist in his building schemes, but this 
suggestion awoke a storm of indignation. Landowners main- 
tained that they were only required by law to repair the roads 
and bridges in their own neighbourhood, not to put their tenants 
at the disposal of the Emperor that he might send them at his 
whim from Aquitaine to Bavaria, or from Austria to Lombardy ; 
and in face of this opposition many of his designs ceased 
abruptly from lack of labour. A royal palace and cathedral, 
adorned with columns and mosaics from Ravenna, were, however, 
completed at Aachen ; and here Charlemagne established his 
principal residence and gathered his court round him. 

The life of this ' new Rome ', as he loved to call it, was simple 
in the extreme ; for the Emperor, like a true Frank, hated 
unnecessary ostentation and ceremony. When the chief nobles 
and officials assembled twice a year in the spring and autumn to 
debate on public matters, he would receive them in person, 
thanking them for the gifts they had brought him, and walking 
up and down amongst them to jest with one and ask questions 
of another with an informality that would have scandalized the 
court at Constantinople. 

In this easy intercourse between sovereign and subject lay 
the secret of Charlemagne's personal magnetism. To warriors 
and churchmen as to officials and the ordinary freemen of his 
demesnes he was not some far-removed authority, who could be 
approached only through a maze of court intrigue, but a man 
like themselves with virtues and failings they could understand. 

If his temper was hasty and terrible when roused, it would 
soon melt away into a genial humour that appreciated to the 
full the rough practical jokes in which the age delighted. The 
chronicles tell us with much satisfaction how Charlemagne once 
persuaded a Jew to offer a 'vainglorious bishop ever fond 
i of vanities ' a painted mouse that he pretended he had brought 
back straight from Judea. The bishop at first declined to give 



94 Charlemagne 

more than £3 for such a treasure ; but, deceived by the Jew's 
prompt refusal to part with it for so paltry a sum, consented 
at length to hand over a bushel of silver in exchange. The 
Emperor, hearing this, gathered the rest of the bishops at his 
court together — '.See what one of you has paid for a mouse ! ' he 
exclaimed gleefully ; and we may be sure that the story did not 
stop at the royal presence but spread throughout the country, 
where haughty ecclesiastics were looked on with little favour. 

We are told also that Charlemagne loved to bombard the 
people he met, from the Pope downwards, with difficult questions ; 
but it was not merely a malicious desire to bring them to 
confusion that prompted his inquiries. Alert himself, and 
keenly interested in whatever business he had in hand, he 
despised slipshod or inefficient knowledge. He expected a 
bishop to be an authority on theology, an official to be an expert 
on methods of government, a scholar to be well grounded in the 
ordinary sciences of his day. 

Hard work was the surest road to his favour, and he spared 
neither himself nor those who entered his service. Even at 
night he would place writing materials beneath his pillow that if 
he woke or thought of anything it might be noted down. On 
one occasion he visited the palace school that he had founded, 
and discovered that while the boys of humble birth were making 
the most of their opportunities, the sons of the nobles, despising 
book-learning, had frittered away their time. Commending 
those who had done well, the Emperor turned to the others with 
an angry frown. 'Relying on your birth and wealth,' he 
exclaimed, ' and carin<g nothing for our commands and your own 
improvement, you have neglected the study of letters and have 
indulged yourselves in pleasures and idleness. . . . By the King 
of Heaven I care little for your noble birth. . . . Know this, unless 
straightway you make up for your former negligence by earnest 
study, you need never expect any favour from the hand 
of Charles.' 

It was with the wealthy nobles and landowners that Charle- 
magne fought some of his hardest battles, though no sword 
was drawn or open war declared. Not only were most of the 



Government of Charlemagne 95 

high offices at court in their hands, but it was from their 
ranks that the counts, and later the viscounts, were chosen 
who ruled over the districts into which the Empire was divided 
and subdivided. 

The count received a third of the gifts and rents from his 
province that would have otherwise been paid to the King ; and 
these, if he were unscrupulous, he could increase at the expense 
of those he governed. He presided in the local law-courts and 
was responsible for the administration of justice, the exaction of 
fines, and for the building of roads and bridges. He was in fact 
a petty king, and would often tyrannize over the people and 
neglect the royal interests to forward his selfish ambitions. 

The Merovingians had tried to limit the authority of the 
counts and other provincial officials by occasionally sending 
private agents of their own to inquire into the state of the 
provinces and to reform the abuses that they found. Charle- 
magne adopted this practice as a regular system ; and at the 
annual assemblies he appointed Missi, or 'messengers', who 
should make a tour of inspection in the district to which they 
had been sent at least four times in the year and afterwards 
report on their progress to the Emperor. Wherever they went 
the count or viscount must yield up his authority to them 
for the time being, allowing them to sit in his court and hear all 
the grievances and complaints that the men and women of the 
district cared to bring forward. If the Missi insisted on 
certain reforms the count must carry them out and also make 
atonement for any charges proved against him. 

Here are some of the evils that the men of Istria, a province 
on the Eastern Adriatic, suffered at the hands of their lord, 
'Johannes', and that the inquiries of the royal Missi at length 
brought to light. Johannes had sold the people on his estates 
as serfs to his sons and daughters : he had forced them to build 
houses for his family and to go voyages on his business across 
the sea to Venice and Ravenna : he had seized the common land 
and used it as his own, bringing in Slavs from across the border 
to till it for his private use : he had robbed his tenants of their 
horses and their money on the plea of the Emperor's service 



96 Charlemagne 

and had given them nothing in exchange. ' If the Emperor will 
help us,' they cried, ' we may be saved, but if not we had better 
die than live.' 

From this account we can see that Charlemagne appeared to 
the mass of his subjects as their champion against the tyranny 
of the nobles, and in this sense his government may be called 
popular; but the old 'popular' assemblies of the Franks at 
which the laws were made had ceased by this reign to be any- 
thing but aristocratic gatherings summoned to approve of the 
measures laid before them. 

The Emperor's ' capitularies ' would be based on the advice 
he had received from his most trusted Missi) and when they 
had been discussed by the principal nobles, they would be read 
to the general assembly and ratified by a formal acceptance that 
meant nothing, because it rarely or never was changed into 
a refusal. 

Besides introducing new legislation in the form of royal edicts 
or capitularies, Charlemagne commanded that a collection should 
be made of all the old tribal laws, such as the Salic Law of the 
Franks, and of the chief codes that had been handed down by 
tradition, or word of mouth, for generations; and this compilation 
was revised and brought up to date. It was a very useful and 
necessary piece of work, yet Charlemagne for all his industry 
does not deserve to be ranked as a great lawgiver like Justinian. 
The very earnestness of his desire to secure immediate justice 
made his capitularies hasty and inadequate. He would not wait 
to trace some evil to its root and then try to eradicate it, but 
would -pass a number of laws on the matter, only touching the 
surface of what was wrong and creating confusion by the multi- 
plicity of instructions and the contradictions they contained. 

Sometimes the Missi themselves were not a success, but would 
take bribes from the rich landowners on their tour of inspection, 
and this would mean more government machinery and fresh 
laws to bring them under the royal control in their turn. If it 
was difficult to make wise laws, it was even harder in that rough 
age to carry them out ; for the nobles found it to their interest 
to defy or at least hinder an authority that struck at their power ; 



Charlemagne and the Church 97 

while the mass of the people were too ignorant to bear respon- 
sibility, and few save those educated in the palace schools could 
become trustworthy ' counts ' or royal agents. 

Dimly, however, the nation understood that the Emperor held 
some high ideal of government planned for their prosperity, 
' No one cried out to him ', says the chronicle, ' but straightway 
he should have good justice' : and in every church throughout 
France those who had not been called to follow him to battle 
prayed for his safety and that God would subdue the barbarians 
before his triumphant arms. 

To Charlemagne there was a higher vision than that of mere 
victory in battle, a vision born of his favourite book, the Civitas 
Dei, wherein St. Augustine had described the perfect Emperor, 
holding his sceptre as a gift God had given and might take away, 
and conquering his enemies that he might lead them to a greater 
knowledge and prosperity. 

Charlemagne believed that to him had been entrusted the 
guardianship of the Catholic Church, not only from the heathen 
without its pale, but from false doctrine and evil .living within. 
To the Pope, as Christ's vice-regent, he bore himself humbly, as 
on the day when he had climbed St. Peter's steps on his knees, 
but to the Pope as a man dealing with other men he spoke 
as a lord to his vassal, tendering his views and expecting com- 
pliance, in return for which he guaranteed the support of his sword. 

' May the ruler of the Church be rightly ruled by thee, O 
King, and may'st thou be ruled by the right hand of the 
Almighty!' In this prayer Alcuin probably expressed the 
Emperor's opinion of his own position. Leo III, on the other 
hand, preferred to talk of his champion as a faithful son of the 
mother Church of Rome ; thereby implying that the Emperor 
should pay a son's duty of obedience : but he himself was never 
in a strong enough position to enforce this point of view, and 
the clash of Empire and Papacy was left for a later age. 

Within his own dominions Charlemagne, like the Frankish 
kings before him, reigned supreme over the Church, appointing 
whom he would as bishops, and using them often as Missi to 
assist him in his government. Yet the Church remained an 



98 Charlemagne 

'estate' apart from the rest of the nation, supported by the 
revenues of the large sees belonging to the different bishoprics 
and by the tithe, or tenth part of a layman's income. When 
churchmen attended the annual assembly they were allowed 
to deliberate apart from the nobles and freemen : when a bishop 
excommunicated some heretic or sinner, the Emperor's court was 
bound to enforce the sentence. Thus the privileges and rights 
were many; but Charlemagne determined that the men who 
enjoyed them must also fulfil the obligations that they carried 
with them. 

In earlier years Charles Martel and St. Boniface had struggled 
hard to raise the character of the Frankish Church, and Charle- 
magne continued their task with his usual energy, insisting 
on frequent inspections of the monasteries and convents and on 
the maintenance of a stricter rule of life within their walls. 

The ordinary parish clergy were also brought under more vigi- 
lant supervision. In accordance with thelawsofthe Roman Church 
they were not allowed to marry, nor might they take part in any 
worldly business, enter a tavern, carry arms, or go hunting or 
hawking. Above all they were encouraged to educate themselves 
that they might be able to teach their parishioners and set 
a good example. 

' Good works are better than knowledge ', wrote Charlemagne 
to his bishops and abbots in a letter of advice, 'but without 
knowledge good works are impossible.' In accordance with 
this view he commanded that a school should be established 
in every diocese, in order that the boys of the neighbourhood 
might receive a grounding in the ordinary education of their day. 
His own court became a centre of learning; for he himself was 
keenly interested in all branches of knowledge, from a close 
study of the Scriptures to mathematics or tales of distant lands. 
Histories he liked to have read out to him at meals. Eginhard, 
his biographer, tells us that he never learned to write, but that he 
was proficient in Latin and could understand Greek. 

It was his desire to emulate Augustus, the first of the Roman 
Emperors, and gather round him the most literary men of 
Europe, and he eagerly welcomed foreign scholars and took 



Character of Charlemagne 99 

them into his service. Chief amongst these adopted sons of the 
Empire was Alcuin the Northumbrian, a 'wanderer on the face 
of the earth ' as he called himself, whom Danish invasions had 
driven from his native land. 

Alcuin settled at the Frankish court, organized the 'palace 
school ' of which we have already made mention, and himself 
wrote the primers from which the boys were taught. His 
influence soon extended beyond this sphere, and he became the 
Emperor's chief adviser, inspiring his master with high ideals, 
while he himself was stirred by the other's vivid personality 
to share his passion for hard work. 

It is this almost volcanic energy that gives the force and charm 
to Charlemagne's many-sided character. We think of him first, 
it may be, as the warrior, the hero of romance, or else as a states- 
man planning his Empire of the West. At another time we see 
in him the guardian of his people, the king who 'wills that 
justice should be done ', but we recall a story such as that of the 
painted mouse, and instantly his simple, almost schoolboy, side 
becomes apparent. The 'Great Charles' was no saint but 
a Frank of the rough type of soldiers he led to battle, capable 
of cruelty as of kindness, hot-tempered, a lover of sport, strong 
perhaps where his ideals were at stake, but weak towards women, 
and an over-indulgent father, who let the intrigues of his 
daughters bring scandal on his court. Yet another contrast to 
this homely figure is the scholar and theologian, the friend of 
Alcuin, who believed that without knowledge good works were 
impossible. 

Many famous characters in history have equalled or surpassed 
Charlemagne as general, statesman, or legislator — there have 
been better scholars and more refined princes — but few or none 
have followed such divers aims and achieved by the sheer force 
of their personality such memorable results. Painters and 
chroniclers love to depict him in old age still majestic ; and in 
truth up till nearly the end of his long reign he kept the fire 
and vigour of his youth, swimming like a boy in the baths of 
Aachen, or hunting the wild boar upon the hills, drawing up 
capitularies, or dictating advice to his bishops, doing, in fact, 

h 2 



i oo Charlemagne 

whatever came to hand with an intensity that would have 
exhausted any one less healthy and self-reliant. 

Fortunately for Charlemagne he had the sturdy constitution 
of his race, and when at last he died an old man in 814 people 
believed that he did not share the common fate of humanity. 
Nearly two hundred years later, it was said, when the funeral 
vault was opened, he was found seated in his chair of state, 
firm of flesh as in life, with his crown on his snowy hair, and his 
sword clasped in his hand. 

' Our Lord gave this boon to Charlemagne that men should 
speak of him as long as the world endureth.' It is a boast that 
as centuries pass, sweeping away the memory of lesser heroes, 
time still justifies. 

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 

Charlemagne, King of the Franks . . . . , 768-800 
„ Emperor of the West . . . 800-14 

Battle of Roncesvalles 778 

Invasion of Lombardy ........ 773 

Haroun al-Raschid died 809 

St. Boniface 715 



IX 

THE INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN 

At the death of Charlemagne the Empire that he had built up 
stretched from Denmark to the Pyrenees and the Duchy of 
Spoletum south of Rome, from the Atlantic on the West to the 
Baltic, Bohemia, and the Dalmatian coast. It had been a brave 
attempt to realize the old Roman ideal of all civilized Europe 
gathered under one ruler ; but he himself was well aware that 
the foundations he had laid were weak, his own personality that 
must vanish the mortar holding them together. Without his 
genius and the terror of his name his possessions were only too 
likely to fall away ; and therefore, instead of attempting to leave 
a united Empire, he nominated one son to be emperor in name, 
but made a rough division of his territory between three. Only 
the death of two just before his own defeated his aims and united 
the inheritance under the survivor, Louis. 

The new Emperor was like his father in build, but without his 
wideness of outlook. His natural geniality was sometimes 
marred by uncontrollable fits of suspicion and cruelty, as in the 
case of his nephew, Bernard, King of Italy, whom he believed 
to be secretly conspiring to bring about his overthrow. Louis 
ordered the young man to appear at his court, and when 
Bernard hesitated, fearing treachery, his uncle sent him a special 
promise of safety by the Empress, whom he trusted. Reluctantly 
Bernard at last obeyed the summons, whereupon he was seized, 
thrust into a dungeon, and his eyes put out so cruelly that he 
died. Shortly afterwards the Empress died also, and Louis 
who had loved her believed that God was punishing him for his 
broken word. Overcome by remorse he became so devout in his 
religious observances that his subjects called him ' Louis the 
Pious '. 



102 The Invasions of the Northmen 

Louis, like his father, was ever ready to listen to the petitions 
of those who were oppressed and to pass laws for their security. 
For the first sixteen years of his reign the Carolingian dominions, 
put to no test, appeared unshaken, and then of a sudden, just as 
if a cloud were blotting out the sunlight, prosperity and peace 
were lost in the horrors of civil war. 

Louis the Pious had three sons by his first wife, and following 
Charlemagne's example he named the eldest, Lothar, as his 
successor in the Empire, while he divided his lands between the 
other two. It was only when he married again and another 
son, Charles, was born to him that trouble began. This fourth 
son was the old Emperor's favourite, and Louis would gladly 
have left him a large kingdom ; but such a gift he could only 
make now at the expense of the elder brothers, who hated the 
young boy as an interloper, and were determined that he should 
receive nothing to which they could lay a claim. 

When Charles was six years old Louis insisted that the 
country now called Switzerland and part of modern Germany 
(Suabia) should be recognized as his inheritance ; and on 
hearing this all three elder brothers, who had been secretly 
making disloyal plots, broke into open revolt. 

The history of the next ten years is an ignominious chronicle 
of the Emperor's weakness. Twice were he and his Empress 
imprisoned and insulted ; and on each occasion, when the 
quarrels of his sons amongst themselves led to his release, he 
was induced to grant a weak forgiveness that led to further 
rebellion. 

When Louis died in 840, the seeds of dissension were widely 
scattered ; and those of his House who came after him openly 
showed that they cared for nothing save personal ambition. 
Lothar, the eldest, was proclaimed Emperor, and obtained as 
his share of the dominions a large middle kingdom stretching 
from the mouth of the Rhine to Italy, and including the two 
capitals of Aachen and Rome. To the East, in what is now 
Germany, reigned his brother Louis, to the West, in France, 
Charles ' the Bald ', the hated younger brother who had 
succeeded at the last in obtaining a substantial inheritance. 



Oath of Strasbourg 103 

This division is interesting because it shows two of the 
nationalities of Europe already emerging from the imperial 
melting-pot. When the brothers Louis and Charles met at 
Strasbourg in 842 to confirm an alliance they had formed against 
Lothar, Charles and his followers took the oath in German, 
Louis and his nobles in the Romance tongue of which modern 
French is the descendant. This they did that the armies on both 
sides might clearly understand how their leaders had bound 
themselves, and the Oath of Strasbourg remains to-day as 
evidence of this new growth of nationality that had already 
acquired distinct national tongues. 

The Partition of Verdun, signed shortly afterwards by all three 
brothers, acknowledged the division of the Empire into three 
parts, France on the West, Germany in the East, and between 
them the debatable kingdom of Lotharingia, that, dwindled 
during the Middle Ages and modern times into the province of 
Lorraine, has remained always a source of war and trouble. 

It would be wearisome to trace in detail the history of the 
years that followed the Partition of Verdun. One historian has 
described it as 'a dizzy and unintelligible spectacle of mono- 
tonous confusion, a scene of unrestrained treachery, of insatiable 
and blind rapacity. No son is obedient or loyal to his father, 
no brother can trust his brother, no uncle spares his nephew. . . . 
There were rapid alterations in fortune, rapid changing of sides, 
there was universal distrust and universal reliance on falsehood 
or crime.' 

In 881 Charles 'the Fat', son of Louis the German, of Stras- 
bourg Oath fame, succeeded, owing to the deaths of his rival 
cousins and uncles, in uniting for a few years all the dominions 
of Charlemagne under his sceptre; but, weak and unhealthy, he 
was not the man to control so great possessions, and very shortly 
he was deposed and died in prison on an island in Lake 
Constance. With him faded away the last reflection of the 
Carolingian glory that had once dazzled the world. In France 
the descendants of Charles 'the Bald' carried on a precarious 
existence for several generations, despised and threatened by 
their own nobles, as the later Merovingians had been, and utterly 



104 The Invasions of the Northmen 

unable to defend their land from the hostile invasions of North- 
men, that, beginning in the eighth century, seemed likely during 
the ninth and tenth centuries to paralyse the civilization and 
trade of Europe as the inroads of Goths, Huns, and Vandals had 
broken up the Roman Empire. 

The long ships of the Northmen had been seen off the French 
coasts even in the days of Charlemagne, and one of the chroniclers 
records how the wise king seeing them exclaimed, ' These vessels 
bear no merchandise but cruel foes,' and then continued, with 
prophetic grief, ' Know ye why I weep ? Truly I fear not that 
these will injure me ; but I am deeply grieved that in my life- 
time they should be so near a landing on these shores, and 
I am overwhelmed with sorrow as I look forward and see what 
evils they will bring upon my offspring and their people.' 

The Northmen, we can guess from their name, came from the 
wild, often snow-bound, coasts of Scandinavia and Denmark. 
Few weaklings could survive in such a climate ; and the race 
was tall, well built, and hardy, made up of men and women who 
despised the fireside and loved to feel the fresh sea-wind beating 
against their faces. Life to them was a perpetual struggle, 
but a struggle they had glorified into an ideal, until they had 
ceased to dread either its discomforts or dangers. 

Here is a description of the three classes, thrall, churl, and 
noble, into which these tribes of Northmen, or ' Vikings ', were 
divided. 

' Thrall was swarthy of skin, his hands wrinkled, his knuckles 
bent, his fingers thick, his face ugly, his back broad, his heels 
long. He began to put forth his strength binding bast, making 
loads, and bearing home faggots the weary day long. His 
children busied themselves with building fences, dunging plough- 
land, tending swine, herding goats, and digging peat. . . . Carl, 
or Churl, was red and ruddy, with rolling eyes, and took to 
breaking oxen, building ploughs, timbering houses, and making 
carts. Earl, the noble, had yellow hair, his cheeks were rosy, 
his eyes were keen as a young serpent's. His occupation was 
shaping the shield, bending the bow, hurling the javelin, shaking 
the lance, riding horses, throwing dice, fencing and swimming. 
He began to wake war, to redden the field, and to fell the 
doomed.' 



Northmen Raids 105 

'To wake war.' This was the object of the Viking's 
existence. His gods, 'Odin' and 'Thor', were battle heroes 
who struck one another in the flash of lightning and with the 
rumble of thunder as they moved their shields. Not for the 
man who lived long and comfortably and died at last in his bed 
were either the glory of this world or the joys of the next. The 
Scandinavian 'Valhalla' was no such 'paradise' as the faithful 
Moslems conceived, where, in sunlit gardens gay with fruit and 
flowers, he should rest from his labours, attended by ' houris ', 
or maidens of celestial beauty. The Viking asked for no rest, 
only for unfailing strength and a foe to kill. In the halls of his 
paradise reigned perpetual battle all the day long, and, in the even- 
ing, feasts where the warrior, miraculously cured of his wounds, 
could boast of his prowess and rise again on the morrow to fresh 
deeds of heroic slaughter. 

In their dragon-ships, the huge prows fashioned into the heads 
of fierce animals or monsters, the Viking ' Earls ', weary of 
dicing and throwing the javelin at home, or exiled by their 
kings for some misdeeds, would sweep in fleets across the North 
Sea, some to explore Iceland and the far-off shores of Greenland 
and North America, some to burn the monasteries along the 
Irish coast, others to raid North Germany, France, or England. 
At first their only object was plunder, for unlike the Huns they 
did not despise the luxuries of civilization — only those who 
allowed its influence to make them 'soft'. At a later date, when 
they met with little resistance, they began to build homes, and 
thus the east coast of England became settled with Danish 
colonies. 

' In this year ', says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, writing under 
the date 855, ' the heathen men for the first time remained over 
winter in Sheppey.' 

During the fifty years that followed it seemed as if the in- 
vaders might sweep away the Anglo-Saxons as completely as the 
ancestors of these Anglo-Saxons had exterminated the original 
British inhabitants and their Roman conquerors. That they 
failed was largely due to one of the most famous of English kings, 
Alfred 'the Great', a prince of the royal house of Wessex. 



106 The Invasions of the Northmen 

Wessex was a province lying mainly to the south of the River 
Thames, and at Wantage in Berkshire in the year 849 Alfred 
was born, cradled in an atmosphere of war and danger. From 
boyhood he fought by the side of his brothers in a long campaign 
of which the very victories could not hold at bay the restless 
Danes. When Alfred succeeded to the throne he secured a 
temporary peace and began to build a fleet and reform his army ; 
but in a few years his enemies broke across his boundaries once 
more, and he himself, overwhelmed by their numbers, was forced 
to take refuge in the marshes of Somerset. Here at Athelney he 
built a fort and, collecting round him the English warriors of the 
neighbouring counties, organized so strong a resistance that at 
last he inflicted a decisive defeat upon the Danish army. King 
Guthrum, his enemy, sued for peace and at the Treaty of 
Wedmore consented to become a Christian and to recognize 
Alfred as King of Wessex, while he himself retained the Danelaw 
to the north of the Thames. 

This was the beginning of a new England, for from this time 
Alfred and his descendants, having secured the freedom of 
Wessex, set themselves to win back bit by bit the territory held 
by the Danes. First of all under Edward ' the Elder \ Alfred's 
son, the middle kingdom of Mercia was won back, and the Danes 
beyond its border agreed to recognize the King of Wessex as 
their overlord, while later other Wessex rulers overran 
Northumbria and the South of Scotland, so that by the middle of 
the tenth century it could be said that < England from the Forth 
to the Channel was under one ruler '. 

The winning back of the Danelaw had not been merely 
a matter of hewing down Northmen, nor did Alfred earn his 
title of 'the Great' because he could wield a sword bravely and 
lead other men who could do the same. He was a successful 
general because in an age of wild fighting he recognized the 
value of discipline and training. In order to obtain the type of 
men he required he increased the number of ' Thegns ', that is, of 
nobles whose duty it was to serve the King as horsemen, while 
he reorganized the 'fyrd ' or local militia. Henceforth, instead of 
a large army of peasants, who must be sent to their homes every 



Alfred the Great 107 

autumn to reap the harvest, he arranged for the maintenance of 
a small force that he could keep in the field as long as required. 
Its arms were to be supplied by fellow villagers released from 
the obligation to serve themselves on this condition. 

Alfred, besides remodelling his army, set up fortresses along 
his borders, and constructed a fleet ; and, because he believed 
that no great nation can be built on war alone, he made wise 
laws and appointed judges, like Charlemagne's Missi, to see that 
they were carried out. He also founded schools and tried, by 
translating books himself and inviting scholars to his court, to 
teach the men around him the glories and interests of peace. 
Amongst the books that he chose to set before his people in 
the Anglo-Saxon tongue was one called Pastoral Care, by the 
Pope Gregory who had wished to go to England as a missionary, 
and The Consolations of Philosophy, written by Boethius in 
prison. 1 

' I have desired,' said Alfred the Great, summing up his ideal 
of life, 'to leave to the men who come after me my memory in 
good works ' ; and English people to-day, descendants of both 
Anglo-Saxons and their Danish foes, remember with pride and 
affection this 'Wise King', this ' Truth-teller ', this 'England's 
darling', as he was called in his own day, who like Charlemagne 
believed in patriotism, justice, and knowledge. For three- 
quarters of a century after Alfred's death his descendants 
kept alive something at any rate of this spirit of greatness, but 
in 978 there succeeded to the crown a boy of ten called Ethelred, 
who as he grew up earned for himself the nickname of ' rede-less ' 
or ' man without advice '. 

It is only fair before condemning Ethelred's conduct to point 
out the heavy difficulties with which he was faced ; both the 
renewed Danish attacks on his shores, and also the jealousies 
and feuds of his own nobles, the Earls, or ' Ealdormen ', who had 
carved out large estates for themselves that they ruled as petty 
kings. Even a statesman like Alfred would have needed all his 
strength and tact to unite these powerful subjects under one 
banner in order to lead them against the invaders. Ethelred 

1 See p. 48. 



108 The Invasions of the Northmen 

proved himself weak and without any power of leadership. The 
policy for which he has been chiefly remembered is his levy of 
a tax called ' Danegeld ', or Danish gold, the sums of money that 
he raised from his reluctant subjects to pay the Danes to go 
away. As a wiser man would have realized, this really meant 
that he paid them to return in still larger numbers in order to 
obtain more money. At last, alarmed at the result of this policy, 
he did something still more short-sighted and less defensible : 
he ordered a general massacre of all the Danes in the kingdom. 

The Massacre of St. Brice's Day, as this drastic measure is 
usually called, brought on England a bitter revenge at the hands 
of the angry Vikings. One well-armed force after another landed 
on the coasts, combining in an attack on the Anglo-Saxon 
King that drove him from the country to seek refuge in France. 
Very shortly afterwards he died, and Cnut, one of the Danish 
leaders, forced the country to accept him as her ruler. 

This accession of a Danish foe might have been expected to 
undo all the work of Alfred and his sons, but fortunately for 
England Cnut was no reckless Viking with his heart set on war 
for war's sake. On the contrary, he was by nature a statesman 
who planned the foundation of a northern Empire with England 
as its central point. He maintained a bodyguard of Danish 
' Hus carls ' supported by a tax levied on his new subjects in order 
to ensure his personal safety and the fulfilment of his orders, 
but otherwise he showed himself an Englishman in every way 
he could. In especial he made large gifts to monasteries and 
convents, bestowed favour and lands on English nobles, and 
accepted the laws and customs of the country whose throne he 
had usurped. King of Denmark, and conqueror of England and 
Norway, he was anxious to ally his Empire with the nations of 
the Continent. With this in view he went on a pilgrimage to 
Rome to win the sympathy of the Pope and took a great deal of 
trouble to arrange foreign alliances. He himself married Emma, 
widow of Ethelred ' the Rede-less ', and a sister of the Duke of 
Normandy, thus pleasing the English and bringing himself into 
touch with France. 

The mentfon of Normandy brings us to a second invasion of 



The House of Capet 109 

Northmen, for the Normans, like Cnut himself, were of Scandi- 
navian origin. When some of the Vikings during the ninth 
century had sailed up the Humber and the Thames in the search 
of plunder and homes, others, as Charlemagne, according to the 
chronicler, had foreseen, preferred the harbours of the Seine, 
the Somme, and the Loire. In their methods they showed the 
same reckless daring and brutality as the early invaders of 
England, leaving where they passed smoking ruins of towns 
and churches. 

Charles ' the Bald ' and the feeble remnant of the Carolingian 
line who succeeded him were quite unable to deal with this 
terror, and it was only the creation of a Duchy of Paris, whose 
forces were commanded by a fighting hero, Odo Capet, that 
saved the future capital of France. 

' History repeats itself/ it is sometimes said ; and certainly the 
fate that the Carolingian 'Mayors of the Palace' had meted out 
to their Merovingian kings their own descendants were destined 
to receive again in full measure. 

In 987 died Louis 'the Good-for-nothing', the last of the 
Carolingian kings, leaving as heir to the throne an uncle, Charles, 
Duke of Lorraine. In his short reign Louis had shown himself 
feeble and profligate ; and the nobles of northern France, 
weary of a royal House that like Ethelred of England preferred 
bribing the goodwill of invaders to fighting them, readily agreed 
to set Charles on one side and to take in his place Hugh Capet, 
Duke of Paris, descendant of the famous Odo. 

'Our crown goes not by inheritance,' exclaimed the Arch- 
bishop of Reims, when sanctioning the usurper's claims, 'but 
by wisdom and noble blood.' 

The unfortunate Duke of Lorraine, captured after a vain 
attempt to gain his inheritance, perished in prison, and with him 
disappeared the Carolingians. The House of Capet, built on 
their ruin, survived in the direct line until the fourteenth century, 
and then in a younger branch, the Valois, until France in modern 
times was declared a republic. 

Under the Capets France became not merely a collection of 
tribes and races as under the Merovingians, nor a section of 



no The Invasions of the Northmen 

a European Empire as under the House of Charlemagne, but 
a nation as we see her to-day, with separate interests and customs 
to distinguish her from other nations. This process of fusion 
was slow, and King Hugh and his immediate successors appeared 
in their own day more as powerful rulers of the small district in 
which they lived than as overlords of France. When they 
marched abroad at the head of a large army, achieving victories, 
outlying provinces hastily recognized them as suzerains, or over- 
lords, but when they turned their backs and went home, the 
commands they had issued would be ignored and defied. 

Amongst the most formidable neighbours of these rulers of 
Paris were the Dukes of Normandy, descendants of a certain 
Viking chief, Rollo 'the Ganger', so called because on account 
of his size he could find no horse capable of bearing him and 
must therefore ' gang afoot '. This Rollo established himself at 
Rouen, and because Charles ' the Simple ', one of the later 
Carolingians, 1 was unable to defeat him in battle he gave him 
instead the lands which he had won, and created him Duke, 
hoping that like a poacher turned gamekeeper he might prove 
as valuable a subject as he had been a troublesome foe. In re- 
turn Rollo promised to become a Christian and to acknowledge 
Charles as his overlord. One of the old chronicles says that 
when Rollo was asked to ratify this allegiance by kissing his toe, 
the Viking replied indignantly, ' Not so, by God ! ' and that 
a Dane who consented to do so in his place was so rough that he 
tumbled Charles from his throne amid the jeers of his companions. 

This is probably only a tale, for in reality Rollo married 
a daughter of Charles and settled down in his capital at Rouen 
as the model ruler of a semi-civilized state, supporting the 
Church, and administering such law and order that it was said 
when he left a massive bracelet hanging on a tree and forgot he 
had done so, that the ornament remained for three years without 
any one daring to steal it. 

The rulers of the new Duchy were nearly all strong men, hard 
fighters, shrewd-headed, and ambitious ; but the greatest of the 
line was undoubtedly William, an illegitimate son of Duke 

1 See Genealogy, p. 377. 



William the Conqueror 1 1 1 

Robert ' the Devil '. William's ambition was of the restless type 
of his Scandinavian forefathers, and his duchy in northern 
France seemed to him too small to niatch his hopes. When he 
noted that England was ruled by Edward ' the Confessor ',a feeble 
son of Ethelred 'the Rede-less', who had gained the throne on 
the death of Cnut's two sons, he determined shrewdly that his 
conquests should lie in this direction. Many things favoured 
his cause, not the least that Edward the Confessor himself, who 
had been brought up in Normandy and who had no direct 
heirs, was quite willing to acknowledge William as his successor. 

The national hero of England at the time Edward died, and 
who promptly proclaimed himself king, was Harold the Saxon, 
a member of the powerful family of Godwin that had for years 
controlled and owned the greater part of the land in the south. 

Unfortunately for Harold the north and midlands were mainly 
governed by the House of Morkere and their friends, who hated 
the family of Godwin as dangerous rivals far more than they 
dreaded a Norman invasion. Thus any help that they or their 
tenants proffered was so slow in its rendering and so niggardly 
in its amount that it proved of very little use. 

In addition to jealousies at home, Harold, at the moment that 
he heard William, Duke of Normandy, had indeed landed on the 
south coast, was far off in Yorkshire, where he had just 
succeeded in repelling an invasion of Danes at the battle of 
Stamford Bridge. At once he started southwards, but as he 
marched his army melted away, some of the men to enjoy the 
spoils taken from the Danes, others to attend to their harvests. 

The deserters could claim that they were following the advice 
of the Father of Christendom, since Pope Gregory VII had 
given William a banner that he had blessed and had denounced 
Harold as a perjurer. 

One of the reasons for Gregory's anger with the Saxons was 
that Harold had dared to appoint as Archbishop of Canterbury 
a bishop of whom he did nof approve, while further the crafty 
William had persuaded him that Harold, who as a young man 
had been wrecked upon the Norman coast, had sworn on the 
bones of some holy saint that he would never seize the crown 



ii2 The Invasions of the Northmen 

of England. He had been a prisoner in William's power and 
only on this condition had he been set free to return to his 
native land. • 

The exact truth of events so long ago is hard to reach ; but 
Harold, at any rate, fought under a cloud of suspicion and neglect, 
and not all his reckless daring, nor the devotion of his brothers 
and friends, could save his fortunes when on the field of Senlac, 
standing beneath his dragon-banner, he met the shock of the 
disciplined Norman forces. Chroniclers relate that the human 
wall of Saxon archers and foot-soldiers remained unshaken on 
the hill-side until William, setting a snare, turned in pretended 
flight. The ruse was successful ; for as the Saxons, cheering 
triumphantly, descended from their position in pursuit, the in- 
vaders faced round and charged their disordered ranks. Only 
Harold and the men of his bodyguard remained firm under the 
onslaught, until at the last an arrow fired in the air struck the 
Saxon King in the eye as he looked up, so that he fell down 
dead. All resistance was now at an end and William, Duke of 
Normandy, was left master of the field and ruler of England. 

Here rose the dragon-banner of our realm : 

Here fought, here fell, our Norman-slandered king. 

O garden blossoming out of English blood ! 

O strange hate-healer Time ! We stroll and stare 

Where might made right eight hundred years ago. 

These lines of Tennyson on ' Battle Abbey ' recall the fact 
that just as the Danes and Saxons were fused into one race, so 
would the Norman invaders mingle with their descendants, until 
to after-generations William as well as Harold should appear a 
national hero. 

In his own day 'the Conqueror' struck terror into the heart 
of the conquered. In 1069, when the North of England, too late 
to help Harold, rose in revolt, he laid waste a desert by sword 
and fire from the H umber to the Tees. When the Norman 
barons and English earls challenged his rule he threw them 
alike into dungeons. What seemed to the Saxon mind even 
more wonderful and horrible than his cruelty was the record 
of all the wealth of his kingdom that he caused to be compiled. 



Domesday Book 113 

This ' Domesday Book ' contained a close account not only of the 
great estates, lay and ecclesiastical, but of every small hamlet, 
and even of the number of live stock on each farm. 

' So very narrowly did he cause the survey to be made,' says 
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'that there was not a single hide 
nor a rood of land, nor (it is shameful to relate that which he 
thought no shame to do) was there an ox, or a cow, or a pig, 
passed by that was not set down in the account.' 

William, it can be seen, was thorough in his methods, both in war 
and peace, and through this very thoroughness he won the 
respect if not the affection of his new subjects. Ever since the 
death of Cnut the Dane, England had suffered either from 
actual civil war or from a weak ruler who allowed his nobles to 
quarrel and oppress the rest of the nation. As a result of the 
Norman Conquest the bulk of the population found that they had 
gained one tyrant instead of many ; and how they appreciated 
the change is shown by the way, all through Norman times, the 
middle and lower classes would help their foreign king against 
his turbulent baronage. 

This is what a monk, an Anglo-Saxon, and therefore by 
race an enemy of the Conqueror, wrote about him in his 
chronicle : 

' If any would know what manner of man King William 
was . . . then will we describe him as we have known him. . . . 
This King William . . . was a very wise and a great man, and 
more honoured and more powerful than any of his predecessors. 
He was mild to those good men who loved God, but severe 
beyond measure to those who withstood his will. ... So also he 
was a very stern and wrathful man, so that none durst do 
anything against his will, and he kept in prison those Earls who 
acted against his pleasure. He removed bishops from their 
sees . . . and at length he spared not his own brother Odo. 

' Amongst other things the good order that William established 
must not be forgotten ; it was such that any man who was 
himself aught might travel over the kingdom with a bosom full 
of gold unmolested, and no man durst kill another, however 
great the injury he might have received from him.' 

A few lines farther on the chronicler, having mentioned the 

2627 I 



ii4 The Invasions of the Northmen 

peace that William gave, sadly relates the tyranny that was the 
price he extorted in exchange : 

' Truly there was much trouble in these times and very great 
distress ; he caused castles to be built and oppressed the poor. . . . 
He was given to avarice and greedily loved gain. He made 
large forests for the deer, and enacted laws therewith, so that 
whoever killed a hart or a hind should be blinded . . . , he loved 
the tall stags as if he were their father. He also appointed 
concerning the hares that they should go free. The rich 
complained and the poor murmured, but he was so sturdy that 
he recked nought of them ; they must will all that the king 
willed if they would live. . . . Alas that any man should so exalt 
himself. . . . May Almighty God show mercy to his soul f ' 

The monk wrote after September 1087, when the Conqueror 
lay dead. Not in any Viking glory of battle against a national 
foe had he passed to his fathers, but in sordid struggle with his 
eldest son Robert who, aided by the French king, had rebelled 
against him. His crown was at once seized by his second son 
William Rufus, and with him the line of Norman kings was 
firmly established on the English throne. 

The adventurous spirit of the Northmen had led them from 
Denmark and Scandinavia to the coasts of England and France ; 
and from France their descendants, driven by the same roving 
instincts, had crossed the Channel in search of fresh conquests. 
Other Normans in the eleventh century sailed south instead 
of north. Their talk was of a pilgrimage to Rome, perhaps to 
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; but when they found that the 
beautiful island of Sicily had been taken by the Moslems, and 
that South Italy was divided up amongst a number of princes 
too jealous of one another to unite against any invaders either 
Christian or pagan, their thoughts turned quite naturally to 
conquest. 

An Italian of this time describes the Normans as 'cunning 
and revengeful ', and adds : 'In their eager search for wealth 
and dominion they despise whatever they possess and hope 
whatever they desire.' Such an impression was to be gained by 
bitter experience ; but not knowing it, Maniaces, the Greek 
governor of that part of South Italy that still maintained its 



Norman Conquests in Italy 1 1 5 

allegiance to the Eastern Empire, invited these Northern 
warriors in the eleventh century to help him win back Sicily 
from the Saracens. They agreed, attacked in force, gained the 
greater part of the island, but then quarrelled with Maniaces 
over the spoils. Outraged by what they considered his miserly 
conduct, they invaded the province of Apulia, made themselves 
master of it, and established their capital at Melfi. 

The head of the new Norman state was a certain William de 
Hauteville, who with several of his brothers had been leaders in 
the Italian expedition. 

' No member of the House of Hauteville ever saw a neighbour's 
lands without wanting them for himself.' So says a biographer 
of that family ; and if this was their ideal it was certainly shared 
by William and his numerous brothers. Since other people's 
possessions were not surrendered without a struggle, even in 
the Middle Ages, it was fortunate for them that they had the 
genius to win and hold what they coveted. 

Pope Leo IX, like his predecessors in the See of Peter ever 
since Charlemagne had confirmed their right to the lands of the 
Exarch of Ravenna, 1 looked uneasily on invaders of Italy, and 
he therefore attempted to form a league with both the Emperors 
of the East and West that should ruin these presumptious 
usurpers. The league came into being, but the Pope's allies 
failed him, and at the battle of Civitate he was defeated and all 
but taken prisoner. 

Here was a chance for Norman diplomacy, or, as Italians 
would have called it, 'cunning', and the conquerors promptly 
declared that it had been with the utmost reluctance that they had 
made war on the Father of Christendom, and begged his forgive- 
ness. His absolution was obtained, and a few years later, 
through the mediation of Hildebrand, then Archdeacon of Rome 
and later as Pope Gregory VII, one of the leading statesmen 
of Europe, a compact was arranged by which the Normans 
recognized Pope Nicholas II as their overlord, while he, on his 
part, acknowledged their right to keep their conquests. Both 
parties to this bargain were pleased : the Pope because he had 

1 See p. 85. 
I 2 



i r 6 The Invasions of the Northmen 

gained a vassal state however unruly, the Normans since they 
felt that they no longer reigned on sufferance, but had a legal 
status in the eyes of Europe. Neither had any idea of the mine 
of trouble they were laying for future generations. 

The fortunes of the House of Hauteville, thus established, 
mounted steadily. William died and was succeeded by a younger 
brother, Robert, nicknamed 'Guiscard' or 'the Wise'. During 
his reign he forced both the Greek governor and the indepen- 
dent princes who held the rest of South Italy to surrender their 
possessions, while he even carried his war against the Eastern 
Empire to Greece itself. Only his death put an end to this 
daring campaign. 

Robert Guiscard, as master of South Italy, had been created 
Duke of Apulia; his nephew, Roger II, Count of Sicily, who 
inherited his statecraft and strength, induced the Pope to magnify 
both mainland and island into a joint kingdom, and thereafter 
reigned as King of Naples. ' He was a lover of justice ', says a 
chronicler of his day, 'and a most severe avenger of crime. He 
hated lying . . . and never promised what he did not mean to 
perform. He never persecuted his private enemies, and in war 
endeavoured on all occasions to gain his point without shedding 
blood. Justice and peace were universally observed through 
his dominions.' 

Roger II of Naples was evidently a finer and more civilized 
character than William of England ; but in both lay that Norman 
capacity for establishing and maintaining order that at first 
seems so strange an inheritance from wild Norse ancestors. 
Clear-sighted, iron-nerved, an adventurer with an instinct for 
business, the Norman of the Early Middle Ages was just the 
leaven that Europe required to raise her out of the indolent 
depression of the ' Dark Ages ' that followed the fall of Rome. 
Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 

The Emperor Lothar . . 840-55 1 Domesday Book .... 1086 



Massacre of St. Brice's Day 1002 
William, Duke of Nor- 
mandy 1035-87 

William, King of England 1066-87 
Edward the Confessor . . 1042-66 



Pope Leo IX 1048-54 

Battle of Civitate .... 1053 
Pope Nicholas II ... 1058-61 
Robert, Duke of Apulia . 1060-85 
Roger II, King of Naples . 1130 



X 

FEUDALISM AND MONASTICISM 

Feudalism 

Wherever in the course of history men have gathered 
together they have gradually evolved some form of association 
that would ensure mutual interests. It might be merely the 
tribal bond of the Arabians, by which a man's relations were 
responsible for his acts and avenged his wrongs ; it might be a 
council of village elders such as the Russian ' Mir', making laws 
for the younger men and women ; it might be a group of German 
chiefs legislating on moonlit nights, according to the description 
of Tacitus, by their camp fires. 

In contrast to primitive associations stands the elaborate 
government of Rome under Augustus and his successors; the 
despotic Emperor, his numberless officials, the senators with 
their huge estates, the struggling curiales, the army of legions 
carrying out the imperial commands from Scotland to the 
Euphrates. When Rome fell, her government, like a house 
whose foundations have collapsed, fell also. Barbarian con- 
querors, established in Italy and the Roman provinces, took 
what they liked of the laws that they found, added to them their 
own customs, and out of the blend evolved new codes of legisla- 
tion. Yet legislation, without some method of ensuring 
its execution, could not save nations from invasion nor the 
merchant or peasant from becoming the victim of robberies and 
petty crimes. 

Mediaeval centuries are sometimes called the Age of Feudalism, 
because during this time feudalism was the method gradually 
adopted for dealing with the problems of public life amongst all 
classes in nearly all the nations of Europe. There are two 
chief things to be remembered about feudalism — first that it was 



1 1 8 Feudalism and Monasticism 

no sudden invention but a growth out of old ideas both Roman 
and barbarian, and next that it was intimately connected in men's 
minds with the thought of land. This was natural, for after all, 
land or its products are as necessary to the life of every 
individual as air and water, and therefore the cultivation of the 
soil and the distribution of its fruits are the first problems with 
which governments are faced. 

Feudalism assumed that all the land belonging to a nation 
belonged in the first place to that nation's king. Because he 
could not govern or cultivate it all himself he would parcel it out 
in ' fiefs ' amongst the chief nobles at his court, promising them 
his protection, and asking in return that they should do him 
some specified service. This system recalls the ' villa ' of Roman 
days with its senator, granting protection to his tenants from 
robbery and excessive taxation, and employing them to plough 
and sow, to reap his crops, and build his houses and bridges. 

In the Middle Ages the service of the chief tenants was nearly 
always military : to appear when summoned by the king with so 
many horsemen and so many archers fully armed. In order to 
provide this force the tenant would be driven in his turn to 
grant out parts of his lands to other tenants, who would come 
when he called them with horsemen and arms that they had 
collected in a similar way. This process was called ' subinfeuda- 
tion '. Society thus took the form of a pyramid with the king 
at the apex, immediately below him his tenants-in-chief, and 
below them in graded ranks or layers the other tenants. 

This brings us to the base of the pyramid, the people who 
could not fight themselves, having neither horses nor weapons, 
and who certainly could not lend any other soldiers to their 
lord's banner. Were they to receive no land ? 

In the Roman ' villa ' the bottom strata was the slave, the 
chattel with no rights even over his own body. Under the 
system of feudalism the base of the pyramid was made up of 'serfs', 
men originally free, with a customary right to the land on which 
they lived, who had lost their freedom under feudal law and had 
become bound to the land, ascripti glebae, in such a way that 
if the land were sub-let or sold they would pass over to the new 



Feudalism 1 1 9 

owner like the trees or the grass. In return for their land, 
though they might not serve their master with spear or bow, they 
would work in his fields, build his bridges and castles, mend his 
roads, and guard his cattle. 

From top to bottom of this pyramid of feudal society ran the 
binding mortar of 'tenure' and 'service'; but these were not 
the only links which kept feudal society together. When 
a tenant did ' homage ' for his land, and 'with head uncovered, with 
belt ungirt, his sword removed ', placed his hands between those 
of his lord, and took an oath, after the manner of the thegns 
of Wessex to their king, ' to love what he loved and shun what 
he shunned both on sea and on land ', there entered into this 
relationship the finer bond of loyalty due from a vassal to his 
overlord. It was the descendant of the old Teutonic idea of the 
comitatus described by Tacitus, 1 the chief destined to lead and 
guide, his bodyguard pledged to follow him to death if necessary. 

Put shortly, then, feudalism may be described as a system 
of society based upon the holding of land — a system, that is, in 
which a man's legal status and social rank were in the main 
determined by the conditions on which he held (i.e. possessed) 
his land. Such a system, to return to our example of the 
pyramid, grew not only from the apex, by the sovereign granting 
lands, as the King of France did to Rollo ' the Ganger ', but from 
the middle and base as well. 

One of the chief feudal powers in mediaeval times was the 
Church, for though abbots and bishops were not supposed 
to fight themselves, yet they would often have numbers of lay 
military tenants to bring to the help of the king or their 
overlord. Some of these tenants were men whom they had 
provided with estates, but others were landowners who had 
voluntarily surrendered their rights over their land in return for 
the protection of a local monastery or bishopric, and thus become 
its tenants. A large part of the Church land was, however, 
held, not by military or lay tenure, but in return for spiritual 
services, or free alms as it was called, i. e. prayers for the soul 
of the donor. Perhaps a landowner wished to make a pious gift 

1 See p. 16. 



120 Feudalism and Monasticism 

on his death-bed, or had committed a crime and believed that 
a surrender of his property to the Church would placate God. 
For some such reason, at any rate, he made over his land, 
or part of it, to the Church, which in this way accumulated 
great estates and endowments, free from the usual liabilities 
of lay tenure. All over Europe other men, and even whole 
villages and towns, were taking the same steps, seeking 
protection direct from the king, or a great lord, or an abbot or 
bishop, offering in return rent, services, or tolls on their 
merchandise. 

Feudalism at its best stood for the protection of the weak in an 
age when armies and a police force as we understand the terms 
did not exist. Even when the system fell below this standard, 
and it often fell badly, there still remained in its appeal to loyalty 
an ideal above and beyond the ordinary outlook of the day, 
a seed of nobler feeling that with the growth of civilization and 
under the influence of the Church blossomed into the flower 
of chivalry. 

I made them lay their hands in mine and swear 

To reverence the King as if he were 

Their conscience, and their conscience as their King : 

To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, 

To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, 

To speak no slander ; no ! nor listen to it, 

To honour his own word as if his God's, 

To live sweet lives in purest chastity. 

Such are the vows that Tennyson puts in the mouth 
of Arthur's knights, who with Charlemagne and his Paladins 
were the heroes of mediaeval romance and dreams. King 
Henry the Fowler, who ruled Germany in the early part of the 
tenth century, instituted the Order of Knighthood, forming 
a bodyguard from the younger brothers and sons of his chief 
barons. Before they received the sword-tap on the shoulder 
that confirmed their new rank, these candidates for knighthood 
took four vows : first to speak the truth, next to serve faithfully 
both King and Church, thirdly never to harm a woman, and 
lastly never to turn their back on a foe. 



Feudalism 1 2 1 

Probably many of these half-barbarian young swashbucklers 
broke their vows freely ; but some would remember and obey ; 
and so amid the general roughness and cruelty of the age, there 
would be established a small leaven of gentleness and pity left 
to expand its influence through the coming generations. It is 
because of this ideal of chivalry, often eclipsed and even 
travestied by those who claimed to be its brightest mirrors, but 
never quite lost to Europe, that strong nations have been found 
ready to defend the rights of the weak, and men have laid down 
their lives to avenge the oppression of women and children. 

Of the evil side of feudalism much more could be written than 
of the good. The system, on its military side, was intended 
to provide the king with an army; but if one of his tenants-in- 
chief chose to rebel against him, the vassals who held their lands 
from this tenant were much more likely to keep faith with the lord 
to whom they had paid immediate homage than with their sove- 
reign. Thus often the only force on which a king could rely were 
the vassals of the royal domain. 

Again, feudalism, by its policy of making tenants-in-chief 
responsible for law and order on their estates, had set up 
a number of petty rulers with almost absolute power. Peasants 
were tried for their offences in their lord's court by his bailiff or 
agent, and by his will they suffered death or paid their fines. 
Except in the case of a Charlemagne, strong enough to send out 
Mtsst 1 and to support them when they overrode local decisions, 
the lord's justice or injustice would seem a real thing to his 
tenants and serfs, the king's law something shadowy and far 
away. 

As Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror had been 
quite as powerful as his overlord the King of France. When he 
came to England he was determined that none of the barons to 
whom he had granted estates should ever be his equal in this 
way. He therefore summoned all landowning men in England 
to a council at Salisbury in 1086, and made them take an oath of 
allegiance to himself before all other lords. Because he was 
a strong man he kept his barons true to their oath or punished 

1 See p. 95. 



122 Feudalism and Monasticism 

them, but during the reign of his grandson Stephen, who disputed 
the English throne with his cousin Matilda and therefore tried to 
buy the support of the military class by gifts and concessions, 
the vices of feudalism ran almost unchecked. 

'They had done homage to him and sworn oaths,' says the 
Anglo-Saxon chronicler, ' but they no faith kept ... for every 
rich man built his castles and defended them against him, 
and they filled the land with castles. . . . Then they took these 
whom they suspected to have any goods by night and by day, 
seizing both men and women, and they put them in prison 
for their gold and silver, and tortured them with pains unspeak- 
able. ... I cannot and I may not tell of all the wounds and of all 
the tortures that they inflicted upon the wretched men of this 
land ; and this state of things lasted the nineteen years that 
Stephen was king and ever grew worse and worse.' 

Stephen was a weak ruler struggling with a civil war ; so that 
it might be argued that no system of government could have 
worked well under such auspices ; but if we turn to the normal 
life of the peasant folk on the estates of the monastery of Mont 
St. Michael in the thirteenth century, we shall see that the 
humble tenants at the base of the feudal pyramid paid dearly 
enough for the protection of their overlords. 

' In June the peasants must cut and pile the hay and carry it 
to the manor-house ... in August they must reap and carry in 
the Convent grain, their own grain lies exposed to wind and 
rain. . . . On the Nativity of the Virgin the villein owes the pork 
due, one pig in eight ... at Xmas the fowl fine and good ... on 
Palm Sunday the sheep due ... at Easter he must plough, sow, 
and harrow. When there is building the tenant must bring 
stone and serve the masons ... he must also haul the convent 
wood for two deniers a day. If he sells his land he owes his 
lord a thirteenth of its value, if he marries his daughter outs?de 
the lord's demense he pays a fine, — he must grind his grain at 
the lord's mill and bake his bread at the lord's oven, where the 
customary charges never satisfy the servants.' 

Certainly the peasant of the Middle Ages can have had little 
time to lament even his own misery. Perhaps to keep his hovel 
from fire and pillage and his family from starvation was all 
to which he often aspired, 



The Truce of God 123 

' War ', it has been said, ' was the law of the feudal world ', 
and all over Europe the moat-girt castles of powerful barons, 
and walled towns and villages sprang up as a witness to 
the turbulent state of society during these centuries. To some 
natures this atmosphere of violence of course appealed. 

I, Sirs, am for war, 

Peace giveth me pain, 

No other creed will hold me again. 

On Monday, on Tuesday, — whenever you will, 

Day, week, month, or year, are the same to me still. 

So sang a Provencal baron of the twelfth century, and we find 
an echo of his spirit in Spain as late as the fifteenth, when 
a certain noble, sighing for the joys and spoils of civil war, 
remarked, ' I would there were many kings in Castile for then I 
should be one of them.' 

The Church, endeavouring to cope with the spirit of anarchy, 
succeeded in establishing on different occasions a 'Truce 
of God ', somewhat resembling the ' Sacred Months ' devised by 
the Arabs for a like purpose. From Wednesday to Monday, 
and during certain seasons of the year, such as Advent or Lent, 
war was completely forbidden under ecclesiastical censure, while 
at no time were priests, labourers, women, or children to be 
molested. 

The defect of such reforms lay in the absence of machinery to 
enforce them ; and feudalism, the system by which in practice 
the few lived at the expense of the many, continued to flourish 
until foreign adventure, such as the Crusades, absorbed some of 
its chief supporters, and civilization and humanity succeeded 
in building up new foundations of society to take its place. It 
would seem as if the lessons of good government had to be 
learned in a hard school, generally through bitter experience on 
the part of the governed. 

Monasticism 

If the study of feudalism is necessary to a knowledge of the 
material life of the Middle Ages, its spirit is equally a closed 
book without an understanding of monasticism. What induced 



124 Feudalism and Monasticism 

men and women, not just a few devout souls, but thousands 
of ordinary people of all nations and classes from the prince to 
the serf to forsake the world for the cloister ; and, far from 
regretting this sacrifice, to maintain with obvious sincerity that 
they had chosen the better part? If we would realize the 
mediaeval mind we must find an answer to this question. 

Turning to the earliest days of monasticism, when the ' Fathers 
of the Church ' sought hermits' cells, we recall the shrinking 
of finer natures from the brutality and lust of pagan society; the 
intense conviction that the way to draw nearer God was to shut 
out the world ; the desire of a Simon Stylites to make the 
thoughtless mind by the sight of his self-inflicted penance think 
for a moment at any rate of a future Heaven and Hell. 

Motives such as .these continued to inspire the enthusiastic 
Christian throughout the Dark Ages following the fall of Rome ; 
but, as Europe became outwardly converted to the Catholic 
Faith, it was not paganism from which the monk fled, but the 
mockery of his own beliefs that he found in the lives of so-called 
Christians. The corruption of imperial courts, even those of a 
Constantine or Charlemagne, the cunning cruelty of a baptized 
Clovis, the ruthless selfishness of a feudal baron or Norman 
adventurer fighting in the name of Christ : all these were hard 
to reconcile with a gospel of poverty, gentleness, and brother- 
hood. 

Even the light of pure ideals once held aloft by the Church 
had begun to burn dim ; for men are usually tolerant of evils to 
which they are accustomed, and the priest who had grown up 
amid barbarian invasions was inclined to look on the coarseness 
and violence that they bred as a natural side of life. As a rule 
he continued to maintain a slightly higher standard of conduct 
than his parishioners, but sometimes he fell to their level or 
below. 

The great danger to the Church, however, was, as always in 
her history, not the hardships that she encountered but the 
prosperity. The bishops, 'overseers' responsible for the 
discipline and well-being of their dioceses, became in the Middle 
Ages, by reason of their very power and influence, too often the 



St. Benedict 125 

servants of earthly rulers rather than of God. Far better 
educated and disciplined than the laymen, experienced in 
diocesan affairs, without ties of wife and family, since the Church 
law forbade the clergy to marry, they were selected by kings for 
responsible office in the state. Usually they proved the wisdom 
of his choice through their gifts of administration and loyalty, 
but the effect on the Church of adding political to ecclesiastical 
power proved disastrous in the end. 

Their great landed wealth made the bishops feudal barons, 
while bishoprics in their turn came to be regarded as offices at 
the disposal of the king; a bad king would parcel them out 
amongst his favourites or sell them to the highest bidders, 
heedless of their moral character. Thus crept into the Church 
the sin of ' simony ' or ' traffic in holy things ' so strongly 
condemned b}' the first Apostles, and, following hard on the 
heels of simony, the worldliness born of the temptations of 
wealth and power. The bishop who was numbered amongst a 
feudal baronage and entertained a lax nobility at his palace was 
little likely to be shocked at priests convicted of ignorance or 
immorality, or to spend his time in trying to reform their habits. 

It was, then, not only in horror of the world, but in reproach 
of the Church herself that the monk turned to the idea of separa- 
tion from man and communion with God. In the earliest days 
of monasticism each hermit followed his special theory of prayer 
and self-discipline ; he would gather round him small communi- 
ties of disciples, and these would remain or go away to form 
other communities as they chose, a lack of system that often 
resulted in unhealthy fanaticism or useless idleness. 

In the sixth century an Italian monk, Benedict of Nursia (480- 
543), compiled a set of regulations for his followers, which, under the 
name of 'the rule of Benedict', became the standard Code of 
monastic life for all Western Christendom. Benedict demanded 
of his monks a ' novitiate ' of twelve months during which they 
could test their call to a life of continual sacrifice. At the end 
of this time, if the novice still continued resolute in his intention 
and was approved by the monastic authorities, he was accepted 
into the brotherhood by taking the perpetual vows of poverty, 



126 Feudalism and Monasticism 

obedience, and chastity, the three conditions of life most hostile 
to the lust of possession, turbulence, and sensuality that 
dominated the Middle Ages. To these vows were added the 
obligation of manual labour — seven hours work a day in addition 
to the recitation of prayers enjoined on the community. 

The faithful Benedictine at least could never be accused 
of idleness, and to the civilizing influence of the ' regulars ', as 
the monks were called because they obeyed a rule (regula), in 
contrast to the ' secular ' priests who lived in the world, Europe 
owed an immense debt of gratitude. 

Sometimes it is said contemptuously that the monks of the 
Middle Ages chose beautiful sites on which to found luxurious 
homes. Certainly they selected as a rule the neighbourhood 
of rivers and lakes, water being a prime necessity of life, and in 
such neighbourhoods raised chapels and monasteries that have 
become the architectural wonder of the world. Yet many of 
these wonders began in a circle of wooden huts built on a 
reclaimed marsh, and it was the labour of the followers of 
St. Benedict that replaced wood by stone and swamps by gardens 
and farms. 

Where the barbarian or feudal anarchist burned and destroyed, 
the monk of the Middle Ages brought back the barren soil to 
pasturage or tillage ; and just as he weeded, sowed, and planted 
as part of his obligation to God, so from the produce of his 
labours he provided for the destitute at his gate, or in his 
cloister schools supplied the ignorant with the rudiments of 
knowledge and culture. The monasteries were centres of 
mediaeval life, not, like the castles, of death. In his quiet cell 
the monk chronicler became an historian ; the copyist repro- 
duced with careful affection decaying manuscripts ; the illumina- 
tor made careful pictures of his day; the chemist concocted 
strange healing medicines, or in his crucibles developed 
wondrous colours. 

' Good is it for us to dwell here, where man lives more purely, 
falls more rarely; rises more quickly, treads more cautiously, 
rests more securely, is absolved more easily, and rewarded more 
plenteously.' This is the saying of St. Bernard, one of the later 



Foundation of Cluni 127 

monastic reformers ; and his ideal was the general conception 
of the best life possible as understood in the Middle Ages. To 
the monasteries flocked the devout seeking a home of prayer ; 
but also the student or artist unable to follow his bent in the 
turbulent world, and the man who despised or feared the 
atmosphere of war. Even the feudal baron would pause in his 
quarrels to make some pious gift to abbey or priory, a tribute to 
a faith he admired but was too weak to practise. Sometimes he 
came in later life, a penitent who, toiling like his serf, sought 
in the cloister the salvation of his soul. ' In the monasteries,' 
says a mediaeval German, 'one saw Counts cooking in the 
kitchen and Margraves leading their pigs out to feed.' 

Monasticism, with its belief in brotherhood, was a leveller 
of class distinctions ; but, like the rest of the Church, it found in 
the popular enthusiasm it aroused the path of temptation. Men, 
we have seen, entered the cloister for other reasons than pure 
devotion to God ; and the rule of Benedict proving too strict 
they yielded secretly to sins that perhaps were not checked or 
reproved because abbots in time ceased to be saints and became, 
like the bishops, feudal landlords with worldly interests. In 
this way vice and laziness were allowed to spread and cling like 
bindweed. 

Throughout the Middle Ages there were times of corruption 
and failure amongst the monastic Orders, followed by waves 
of sweeping reform and earnest endeavour, when once again the 
Cross was raised as an emblem of sacrifice and drew the more 
spiritual of men unto it. 

In 910 the monastery of Cluni was founded in Burgundy, 
and, freed from the jurisdiction of local bishops by being placed 
under the direct control of the Pope, was able to establish a 
reformed Benedictine Order. Its abbot was recognized not 
only as the superior of the monastery at Cluni but also of 
'daughter' houses that sprang up all over Europe subject to 
his discipline and rule. 

Other monastic Orders founded shortly after this date were 
those of the Carthusians and Cistercians. 

In their desire to combat worldliness the early Carthusians, 



128 Feudalism and Monasticism 

or monks of the monastery of Chartreux, carried on unceasing 
war against the pleasures of the world. Strict fasting for eight 
months in the year ; one meal a day eaten in silence and alone ; 
no conversation with other brethren save at a weekly meeting ; 
this was the background to a life of toil and prayer. 

The monastery of Citeaux in southern France, from which the 
Cistercians take their name*, was another attempt to live in the 
world but not of it. 'The White Monks', so called from the 
colour of their woollen frocks, sought solitudes in which to build 
their houses. Their churches and monasteries remain among 
the glories of architecture ; but through fear of riches they 
refused to place in them crosses of gold and silver or to allow 
their priests to wear embroidered vestments. No Cistercian 
might recite the service of the Mass for money or be paid for 
the cure of souls. With his hands he must work for his meagre 
fare, remembering always to give God thanks for the complete 
self-renunciation to which he was pledged by his Order. 

Chief amongst the Cistercian saints is Bernard (1090-1153), a 
Burgundian noble, who in 11 15 founded a daughter monastery of 
his Order at Clairvaux, and as its head became one of the leaders 
of mediaeval thought. When he was only twenty he had appeared 
before the Abbot of Citeaux with a band of companions, relations 
and friends whom his eloquence had persuaded to enter the 
monastery with him. Throughout his life this power over others 
and his fearlessness in making use of this influence were his 
most vivid characteristics. 'His speech', wrote some one who 
knew him, 'was suited to his audience ... to country-folk he 
spoke as though born and bred in the country, and so to other 
classes as though he had been always occupied with their 
business. He adapted himself to all, desiring to gain all for 
Christ.' 

In these last words lie his mission and the secret of his success. 
Never was his eloquence exerted for himself, and so men who 
wished to criticize were overborne by his single-minded sincerity. 
Severe to his own shortcomings, gentle and humble to his 
brethren, ready to accept reproof or to undertake the meanest 
task, Bernard was fierce and implacable to the man or the 



St. Bernard of Clairvaux 129 

conditions that seemed to him to stand in the way of God's 

will. 

' I grieve over thee, my son Geoffrey,' he wrote to a young 
monk who had fled the austerities of Clairvaux. . . . ' How could 
you, who were called by God, follow the Devil, recalling thee ? 
. . . Turn back, I say, before the abyss swallows thee . . . before 
bound hand and foot thou art cast into outer darkness . . . shut 
in with the darkness of death.' 

To the ruler of France he sent a letter of reproof ending with 
the words : ' It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the 
Living God even for thee, O King ! ' and his audacity, instead 
of working his ruin, brought the leading clergy and statesmen 
of Europe to the cells of Clairvaux as if to some oracle's temple, 
to learn the will of God. 

From his cell St. Bernard preached the Second Crusade, 
reformed abuses in the Church, deposed an Anti-Pope, and 
denounced heretics. In his distrust of human reason, trying to 
free itself from some of the dogmatic assertions of early Christian 
thought, he represented the narrow outlook of his age : but in 
his love of God and through God of humanity he typifies the 
spiritual charm that like a thread of gold runs through all the 
dross of hardness and treachery in the mediaeval mind. 

'Do not grieve,' he wrote to the parents of a novice ... 'he 
goes to God but you do not lose him . . . rather through him 
you gain many sons, for all of us who belong to Clairvaux have 
taken him to be a brother and you to be our parents.' 

To St. Bernard self-renunciation meant self-realization, the 
laying down of a life to find it again purified and enriched ; and 
this was the ideal of monasticism, often misunderstood and 
discredited by its weaker followers, like all ideals, but yet the 
glory of its saints. 



XI 

THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 

We have said that in ' the Oath of Strasbourg ' 1 it was possible 
to distinguish the infant nations of France and Germany. This 
is true — yet Germany, though distinct from her neighbours, was 
to remain all through the Middle Ages rather an agglomeration 
of states than a nation as we understand the word to-day. 

One reason for the absence of any common policy and 
ambitions was that Charlemagne, though he had conquered the 
Saxons and other Germanic tribes, had never succeeded in 
welding them into one people. Under his successors the 
different races easily slipped back into regarding themselves 
rather as Saxons, Franconians, or Bavarians than as Germans : 
indeed the Bohemians relapsed into heathendom and became 
once more altogether uncivilized. 

This instinct for separation was aided by the feudal system, 
since rebel tenants-in-chiefs could count on provincial feeling to 
support them against the king their overlord. It is hardly 
surprising, then, if the struggle that broke out in Germany as else- 
where in Europe between rulers and their feudal baronage was 
decided there in favour of the baronage. 

Perhaps if some strong king could have given his undivided 
attention to the problem he might have succeeded, like William I 
of England, in making himself real master of all Germany ; but 
unfortunately the rulers of the German kingdom were never free 
from foreign wars. Just as the Norsemen had descended on the 
coasts of France, so Danes, Slavs, and Hungarians were a 
constant menace to the civilization of Germany ; hordes of these 
barbarians breaking over the frontiers every year, and even 
pillaging districts as far west as the Rhine. 

German kings, in consequence of this external menace, had to 

1 See p. 103. 



Henry ' the Fowler' 131 

rely for the defence of their frontiers upon the military power of 
their great vassals. They were even forced to create large 
estates called ' Marks ' (march-lands) upon their northern and 
eastern borders to act as national bulwarks. Over these ruled 
'Margraves' ('grafs' or Counts of the Mark) with a large 
measure of independence. Modern Prussia was once the Mark 
of Brandenburg, a war state created against the Slav ; Austria 
the Mark placed in the east between Bavaria and the 
Hungarians ; Schleswig the Mark established to hold back the 
Danes. 

Yet another cause told for disruption : the fact that when the 
Carolingian line came to an end in Germany early in the tenth 
century the practice sprang up of electing kings from among the 
chief princes and dukes. Though this plan worked well if the 
electors made an honest choice, yet it gave the feudal baronage 
a weapon, on the other hand, if they wished to strike a bargain 
with a would-be ruler or to appoint a weakling whose authority 
they could undermine. 

The first of the elected kings of Germany was Conrad of 
Franconia, during whose reign the feudal system took strong 
root, and who ruled rather through his barons than in 
opposition to their wishes. On his death-bed he showed his 
honest desire for the welfare of Germany. ' I know,' he de- 
clared, 'that no man is worthier to sit on my throne than my 
enemy Henry of Saxony. . . .When I am dead, take him the 
crown and the sacred lance, the golden armlet, the sword, and 
the purple mantle of the old kings.' The princes, who followed 
his advice, found their new ruler out hawking on the mountain 
side, and under the nickname Henry 'the Fowler' he became 
their king and one of Germany's national heroes. 

In his untiring struggle against invaders Henry I recalls the 
Anglo-Saxon Alfred ' the Great ', and like Alfred he was at first 
forced to fly before his enemies. To the disgust of the great 
dukes he bought a nine years' peace from the Hungarians by 
paying tribute ; but when the enemy went away he at.once began 
to build castles or ' burgs ', and filled them with soldiers under 
the command of ' burgraves '. These castles were placed all 

k 2 



132 The Investiture Question 

along the frontiers, and gradually villages and towns gathered 
round them for safety. 

In the tenth year the Hungarians came as usual to ask for the 
tribute money, but Henry ordered a dead dog to be thrown at 
their messenger's feet. 

' In future this is all your master will get from us/ he ex- 
claimed, and the answer, as he expected, provoked an immediate 
invasion. Instead of being able to lay waste the countryside as 
of old, however, the Hungarians now found ' burgs ' well fortified 
and provisioned that they could neither take nor leave with safety 
in their rear. When at last they met Henry in pitched battle, they 
broke and fled before his onslaught, declaring that the golden 
banner of St. Michael, carried at the head of his troops, had by 
some wizardry contrived their ruin. 

Besides repulsing invaders, Henry the Fowler imposed his 
will to a considerable extent over his rebellious baronage. In 
another chapter 1 we have noticed how he instituted ' the order of 
knighthood ' as a way of harnessing to his service the restless 
energy of the younger sons of the nobles : he also tried to 
strengthen the middle classes as a counterpoise to the baronage 
by encouraging the construction of walled towns for the pro- 
tection of merchants, while he would hold his councils rather in 
towns than in the woods like his predecessors, in order to attract 
people to settle there. Many of the Marks owe their origin to 
Henry's policy of strengthening the border provinces; and in 
this and in his determination to subdue the Hungarians he found 
an able successor in his son Otto I. 

Otto's reign might from one aspect be called a history of wars. 
First there were foreign wars — the subjugation of Denmark, 
whose king became a German vassal ; the reconquest and con- 
version of Bohemia ; and also a series of campaigns against the 
Hungarians, resulting at last in 955 in a victory at Augsburg 
so complete that never again the hated invaders dared to cross 
the border save in marauding bands. 

But besides fighting against foreign neighbours Otto had a 
continual struggle at home in order to reassert the authority of 

1 See p. 120. 



Otto £ the Great' 133 

the crown over the great duchies such as Lotharingia and 
Bavaria. When he was able to do so he would replace the 
most turbulent of the dukes by members of his own family, or he 
would make gifts of large estates to bishops, hoping in this way 
to provide himself with loyal tenants-in-chief. In this, however, 
he was not successful, for he found the feudal bishops amongst 
his worst enemies ; so that he turned at last for help to the new 
type of Churchman, bred by the Cluniac reform movement — 
men of learning and culture, monks in their religious 
observances, statesmen in their outlook. These were at one 
with him in his desire for a united Germany and a purer Church ; 
but Otto was faced by a great problem when he wished to reform 
and control his bishops. How far were the German clergy 
under his jurisdiction ? How far did they owe obedience only 
to Rome, as they claimed if he tried to exert his authority over 
them ? 

Charlemagne had been able to deal easily with such difficulties, 
for the Pope had been his ally, almost it might be said his vassal, 
and so they could have but one mind on Church matters. By 
the time of Otto the Great, however, German kings had long 
ceased to be emperors, and the imperial title, bandied about 
from one Italian prince to another, had become tarnished in the 
world's eyes. Was it worth while, then, for a German king to 
regain this title in order to gain control over the See of St. Peter? 

Students of history, able to test mediaeval policy by its ulti- 
mate results, will answer ' No', seeing that German kings would 
have done well to resist the will-of-the-wisp lure of the crowns of 
Lombardy and Rome ; but to Otto the question of interference 
in Italy bore a very different aspect. Too great to be dazzled 
by the title of Emperor, too busy to invade Italy merely for the 
sake of forcing the Pope to become his ally, Otto found himself 
faced by the necessity of choosing whether he would make him- 
self lord of the lands on the other side of the Alps or see one of 
his most powerful subjects, the Duke of Bavaria, do so instead. 

The occasion of this choice was the murder of Count Lothair 
of Provence, one of the claimants to the throne of Italy. Lothair's 
widow, Adelaide, a Burgundian princess, appealed to Germany 



134 The Investiture Question 

to avenge her wrongs — a piece of knight-errantry with such 
prospects of profit that several of the German princes and not- 
ably the Duke of Bavaria, whose lands lay just to the north of 
the Alps, were only too willing to undertake it. In 951 Otto 
the Great, anticipating their ambitions, crossed the Alps with an 
army, rescued Adelaide from her husband's murderer, married 
her himself, and was crowned King of Italy at Pavia. 

Recalled to Germany by foreign invasions, he appeared again 
in Italy ten years later, and in February 962 was crowned 
Emperor by the Pope at Rome. His successors, dropping the 
title ' King of Germany ', claimed henceforth to be ' Kings of the 
Romans ' on their election and, after their coronation by the Pope, 
'Holy Roman Emperors' — temporal overlords of Christendom, 
as the Popes claimed to be spiritual viceroys. 

This coronation of Otto the Great was a turning-point in the 
history of Germany, though at the time it caused little stir. To 
Otto himself it was merely the culminating success of his career, 
enabling him to undertake without interference the reform of 
the German Church that he had planned, and also to issue 
a charter that, while confirming the Popes in their temporal 
possessions, insisted that they should take an oath of allegiance 
to the Emperor before their consecration. By this measure the 
Papacy became in the eyes of Europe merely the chief see in the 
Emperor's dominions ; and under Otto's immediate successors 
this supremacy was not seriously disputed by the Popes them- 
selves. In some cases they were German nominees, ready to 
acknowledge the sceptre that secured their election ; but, even 
where this was not the case, there was a general feeling that 
Rome had less to fear from the tyranny of Emperors beyond 
the Alps than from the encroachments of the petty lords of Italy. 

The Dukes of Spoletum, Counts of Tuscany, and Barons of 
the Roman Campagna had no respect at all for the head of 
Christendom except as a pawn in their political moves. One 
of the most unscrupulous and dissolute families in the vicinity of 
Rome, the Crescentii, who claimed the title of Patrician, once 
granted by Eastern Emperors to Italian viceroys, secured the 
Papacy for three successive members of their house. Under 



Synod of Sutri 135 

the last of these, Benedict IX, a boy of twelve at the time of his 
election, vice and tyranny walked through the streets of Rome 
rampant and unashamed. The young Pope, described by 
a contemporary as 'a captain of thieves and brigands', did not 
scruple to crown his sins by selling his holy office in a moment 
of danger to another of his family. As his excesses had already 
led the people of Rome to set up an Anti-Pope, and as he him* 
self withdrew his abdication very shortly, the disgraceful state 
of affairs culminated in three Popes, each denouncing one 
another, and each arming his followers for battle in the streets. 

The interference of the Emperor Henry III (a member of 
the Salian House of Saxony) was welcomed on all sides, and at 
the Synod of Sutri the rival Popes were all deposed and 
a German bishop, chosen by the Emperor, elected in their place. 

Henry III has been described by a modern historian as 'the 
strongest Prince that Europe had seen since Charlemagne '. Not 
only did he succeed in subduing the unruly Bohemians and 
Hungarians, but he also built Germany into the temporary 
semblance of a nation, mastering her baronage and purifying her 
Church. His influence over Italy was wholly for her good ; but 
by the irony of fate his cousin Bruno, whom he nominated to the 
See of St. Peter under the name of Leo IX, was destined to lay 
the foundations of a Papacy independent of German control. 

Bruno himself insisted that he should be elected legally by 
the clergy and people of Rome and, though of royal blood, he 
entered the city barefoot as a penitent. Unlike the haughty 
Roman nobles to whom the title ' Pope ' had merely seemed an 
extra means of obtaining worldly honour and pleasure, he re- 
mained after his consecration gentle and accessible to his 
inferiors, and devoted his whole time to the work of reform. At 
his first council he strongly condemned the sin of simony, and he 
insisted on the celibacy of the clergy as the only way to free them 
from worldly distractions and ambitions. 

In order that his message might not seem intended for Italy 
alone, he made long journeys through Germany and France, 
Everywhere he went he preached the purified ideal of the Church 
upheld by the monks of Cluni ; but side by side with this he and 



136 The Investiture Question 

his successors set another vision that they strove to realize, the 
predominance of the Papacy in Italy as a temporal power. 

It was Leo IX who, dreading the Norman settlements in 
southern Italy as a menace to the states of the Church, formed 
a league against the invaders, but after his defeat at their hands, 
followed shortly by his death, his successors, as we have seen, 
wisely concluded a peace that left them feudal overlords of Apulia 
and Calabria. 1 Realizing that to dominate the affairs of the 
peninsula they must remain at home, future Popes sent am- 
bassadors called ' Legates ' to express and explain their will in 
foreign countries ; while in 1059, in a further effort towards 
independence, Pope Nicholas II revolutionized the method of 
papal elections. Popes, it was decreed, were no longer to be 
chosen by the voice of the people and clergy of Rome generally, 
but only by the 'Cardinals', that is, the principal bishops of the 
city sitting in secret conclave. This body, the College of 
Cardinals, was to be free of imperial interference. 

Behind Pope Nicholas, in this daring policy of independence, 
stood one of the most powerful figures of his age, Hildebrand, 
Archdeacon of Rome. The son of a village carpenter, small, 
ill formed, insignificant in appearance, he possessed the shrewd, 
practical mind and indomitable will of the born ruler of men. It 
is said that in boyhood his companions found him tracing with the 
chips and shavings of his father's workshop the words, ' I shall 
reign from sea to sea', yet he began his career by deliberately 
accepting exile with the best of the Popes deposed by the 
Council of Sutri ; and it was Leo IX, who, hearing of his genius, 
found him and brought him back to Rome. 

Gradually not only successive Popes but the city itself grew to 
lean upon his strength, and when in 1073 the Holy See was left 
vacant, a general cry arose from the populace : ' Hildebrand is 
Pope. ... It is the will of St. Peter ! ' 

Taking the name of Gregory VII, Hildebrand reluctantly, if 
we are to believe his own account, accepted the headship of the 
Church. Perhaps, knowing how different was his ideal of the 
office from its reality, he momentarily trembled at the task he 

1 See p. 115 



Pope Gregory VII 137 

had set himself; but once enthroned there was no weakness in 
his manner to the world. 

In his ears the words of Christ, 'Thou art Peter, and on this 
rock I will build my Church ', could never be reconciled with 
vassalage to any temporal ruler. To St. Peter and his successors, 
not to emperors or kings, had been given the power to bind or 
loose, and Gregory's interpretation of this text did not even 
admit of two co-equal powers ruling Christendom by their 
alliance. ' Human pride has created the power of kings,' he 
declared, ' God's mercy has created the power of bishops . . . 
the Pope is master of Emperors and is rendered holy by the 
merits of his predecessor St. Peter. The Roman Church has 
never erred and Holy Scripture proves that it never can err. To 
resist it is to resist God.' 

Such a point of view, if put to any practical test, was sure to 
encounter firm if not violent opposition. Thus, when Gregory 
demanded from William of Normandy the oath of fealty alleged 
to have been promised by the latter to Alexander II in return for 
the Papal blessing upon the conquest of England, the Conqueror 
replied by sending rich gifts in token of his gratitude for papal 
support, but supplemented them with a message as uncom- 
promising as the Pope's ideal : ' I have not sworn, nor will I 
swear fealty, which was never sworn by any of my predecessors 
to yours.' William thereupon proceeded to dispose of benefices 
and bishoprics in his new kingdom as he chose, and even went 
so far as to forbid the recognition of any new Pope within his 
dominions without his leave, or the publication of papal letters 
and decrees that had not received his sanction. 

Perhaps if England had been nearer to Italy, or if William had 
misused his authority instead of reforming the English Church, 
Gregory VII might have taken up the gauntlet of defiance thus 
thrown at his feet. Instead he remained on friendly terms with 
William ; and it was in the Empire, not in England, that the 
struggle between Church and State began. 

The Emperor Henry III, who had summoned the Synod of 
ISutri, had been a great ruler, great enough even to have effected 
a satisfactory compromise with Hildebrand, but, though before 



138 The Investiture Question 

he died he succeeded in securing his crown for his son Henry, 
a boy of six, he could not bequeath him strength of character or 
statesmanship. Thus from his death, in 1056, the fortunes of his 
House and Empire slowly waned. 

It is difficult to estimate the natural gifts of the new ruler of 
Germany, for an unhappy upbringing warped his outlook and 
affections. Left at first under the guardianship of his mother, 
the Empress Agnes, the young Henry IV was enticed at the age 
of eleven on board a ship belonging to Anno, the ambitious 
Archbishop of Cologne. While he was still admiring her 
wonders the ship set sail up the Rhine, and though the boy 
plunged overboard in an effort to escape his kidnappers he was 
rescued and brought back. For the next four years he remained 
first the pupil of Archbishop Anno, who punished him for the 
slightest fault with harsh cruelty and deprived him of all com- 
panionship of his own age, and then of Adalbert, Archbishop of 
Bremen, who indulged his every whim and passion. 

At length, at the age of fifteen, handsome and kingly in 
appearance, but utterly uncontrolled and dissolute in his way of 
life, Henry was declared of age to govern for himself, and 
straightway began to alienate his barons and people. He had 
been married against his wish to the plain daughter of one of his 
Margraves, and expressed his indignation by ill-treating and 
neglecting her, to the wrath of her powerful relations : he also 
built castles on the hill-tops in Saxony, from which his troops 
oppressed the countryside : but the sin for which he was destined 
to be called to account was his flagrant misuse of his power over 
the German Church. * 

At first, when reproved by the Pope for selling bishoprics and 
benefices, Henry was apologetic in his letters ; but he had no 
real intention of amending his ways and soon began to chafe 
openly at Roman criticism and threats. At last acrimonious 
disputes came to a head in what is called the ' Investiture 
Question ', and because it is a problem that affected the whole 
relations of Church and State in the eleventh century it is 
important to understand what it exactly meant to Europe. 

Investiture was the ceremony by which a temporal ruler, such 



The Investiture Question 139 

as a king, transferred to a newly chosen Church official, such 
as a bishop, the lands and rights belonging to his office. The 
king would present the bishop with a ring and crozier and the 
bishop in return would place his hands between those of the 
king and do him homage like a lay tenant-in-chief. 

The Roman See declared that it was not fitting for hands 
sacred to the service of God at His altar to be placed in sub- 
mission between those that a temporal ruler had stained with the 
blood of war. Behind this figure of speech lay the real reason, 
the implication that if the ring and crozier were to be taken as 
symbols of lands and offices, bishops would tend to regard these 
temporal possessions as the chief things in their lives, and the 
oath of homage they gave in exchange as more important than 
•their vow to do God's service. 

Gregory VII believed that he could not reform the Church 
unless he could detach its officials from dependence on lay rulers 
who could bribe or intimidate them ; and in the age in which he 
lived he could show that for every William of Normandy ready 
to ' invest ' good churchmen there were a hundred kings or petty 
rulers who only cared about good tenants, that is, landlords who 
would supply them faithfully with soldiers and weapons. 

As a counter argument temporal rulers maintained that church- 
men who accepted lands and offices were lay tenants in this 
respect, whatever Popes might choose to call them. The king who 
lost the power of investing his bishops lost control over wealthy 
and important subjects, and since he would also lose the right to 
refuse investiture he might find his principal bishoprics in the 
hands of disloyal rebels or of foreigners about whom he knew 
nothing. 

The whole question was complicated, largely because there was 
so much truth on both sides ; Gregory, however, forced the issue, 
and early in 1075, in a Synod held at Rome, put forth the famous 
decree by which lay investiture was henceforth sternly forbidden. 
Henry IV, on the other hand, spoiled his case by his wild dis- 
regard of justice. In the same year he appointed a new arch- 
bishop to the important See of Milan and invested him without 
consulting Gregory VII at all ; he further proceeded to appoint 



140 The Investiture Question 

two unknown foreigners to Italian bishoprics. Angry at the 
letter of remonstrance which these acts aroused he called a church 
council at Worms in the following year, and there induced the 
majority of German bishops very reluctantly to declare Gregory 
deposed. 

' Henry, King not by usurpation but by God's grace, to 
Hildebrand, henceforth no Pope but false monk. . . . ' Thus 
began his next letter to the Roman pontiff, to which Hildebrand 
replied by excommunicating his deposer. 

' Blessed Peter ... as thy representative I have received from 
God the power to bind and loose in Heaven and on earth. For 
the honour and security of thy Church, in the name of God 
Almighty, I prohibit Henry the King, son of Henry the Emperor, 
. . . from ruling Germany and Italy. I release all Christians 
from the oaths of fealty they may have taken to him, and I order 
that no one shall obey him.' 

This decree provided occasion for all German nobles whom 
Henry IV had alienated to gather under the banner of the papal 
legate, and for the oppressed Saxon countryside to renew the 
serious revolt which had broken out two years before. Even 
the German bishops grew frightened of the part they had played 
in deposing Gregory, so that the once-powerful ruler found him- 
self looked upon as an outlaw with scarcely a real friend, save the 
wife he had ill-treated, and no hope save submission. In the 
winter of 1066, as an old story tells, when the mountains were 
frozen hard with snow and ice, he and his wife and one attendant 
crossed the Alps on sledges, and sought the Pope in his castle 
of Canossa, built amidst the highest ridges of the Apennines. 

Gregory coldly refused him audience. The King, he intimated, 
might declare that he was repentant, he had done so often in the 
past, but words were not deeds. Putting aside his royal robes and 
clad in a penitent's woollen tunic, Henry to show his sincerity 
remained barefoot for three days like a beggar, in the castle yard. 
Then only on the entreaty of some Italian friends was he 
admitted to the presence of the Pope, who at his cry of ' Holy 
Father, spare me ! ' raised him up and gave him formal 
forgiveness. 



The Investiture Question 141 

The scene at Canossa is so dramatic in its display of 
Hildebrand's triumph and the Emperor's humiliation that it has 
lived in the world's memory : yet it was no closing act in their 
struggle, but merely an episode that passed and left little mark. 
Henry IV, as soon as he could win himself a following in 
Germany and Italy, returned to the practice of lay investiture, 
and Gregory VII, who had never believed in his sincerity, con- 
tinued to denounce him and plan the coronation of rival 
emperors, 

Imperial ambitions at last reached their height, for Henry IV 
succeeded in inducing German and Italian bishops to depose 
Gregory once more and even appoint an Anti-Pope, in whose 
name imperial armies ravaged Lombardy, forced their way as far 
south as Rome, and besieged Hildebrand in the castle of St. 
Angelo. From this predicament he was rescued by the Normans 
of South Italy under Robert Guiscard ; but these ruthless vassals 
of the Church massacred and looted the Holy City directly they 
had scaled the walls, and when they turned homewards, carrying 
Gregory VII with them, they left half Rome in ruins. 

Gregory VII died not long afterwards, homeless and deposed, 
but with unshaken confidence in the righteousness of his cause. 
' I have loved justice and hated iniquity,' he said, during his last 
illness, ' therefore I die in exile.' ' In exile thou couldst not 
die,' replied a bishop standing at his bedside. ' Vicar of Christ 
and His Apostles, thou hast received the nations for thine 
inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy posses- 
sion.' Future history was to show that Hildebrand in defeat had 
achieved more than his rival in victory. 

Henry IV outlived his enemy by twenty-one years, but they 
were bitter with disillusionment. Harassed by Gregory VIl's 
successors who continued to advocate papal supremacy, faced by 
one rebellion after another in Germany and Italy, Henry IV 
yielded at last to weariness and old age, when he found his sons 
had become leaders of the forces most hostile to him. Even in 
his submission to their demands he found no peace, for he was 
thrust into prison, compelled to abdicate, and left to die 
miserably of starvation and neglect. 



142 The Investiture Question 

In the reign of his son, Henry V, a compromise on the 
' Investiture Question ' was arranged between Church and 
Empire. By the Concordat of Worms it was agreed first that 
rulers should renounce their claim to invest bishops and abbots 
with the ring and crozier. These were to be given by re- 
presentatives of the Church to candidates chosen and approved 
by them ; but the second point of importance was that this 
ceremony must take place in the presence of the king or his re- 
presentative, to whom the new bishop or abbot would at once do 
homage for his lands and offices. 

Almost a similar settlement had been arrived at between 
Church and State in England some fifteen years earlier, arising 
out of the refusal of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, to do 
homage to Henry I, the Conqueror's son. In this case there 
was no clash of bitterness and dislike, for the old archbishop 
was perfectly loyal to the king at heart, though prepared to go to 
the stake on a matter of conscience, as this question had become 
to earnest churchmen. His master, on his side, respected 
Anselm's saintly character and only wished to safeguard his royal 
rights over all his subjects. 

Compromise was therefore a matter of rejoicing on both sides, 
and with the decisions of the Council at Worms investiture 
ceased to be a vital problem. Its importance lies in the fact that 
it was one of the first battles between Church and State and, 
though a compromise, yet a formal victory for the Church. The 
dependence of the Papacy on the imperial government that 
Europe had considered natural in the days of Charlemagne, or of 
Otto the Great, was a thing of the past, for the acknowledgement 
of ecclesiastical freedom from lay supremacy, one of the main 
issues for which Hildebrand had struggled, schemed, and died, 
had been won by his successors following in his steps. 

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 

Pope Benedict IX 1033-48 

Pope Leo IX 1048-54 

Pope Nicholas II 1058-61 



XII 

THE EARLY CRUSADES 

The imperial standards of Constantinople were designed with 
a two-headed eagle typifying Constantine's rule over the. 
kingdoms of East and West. Towards the end of the eleventh 
century this emblem had become more symbolic of the Emperor's 
anxious outlook upon hostile neighbours. With Asia Minor 
practically lost by the establishment of a Mahometan dynasty at 
Nicea within one hundred miles of the Christian capital, with 
the Bulgarians at the gates of Adrianople, and the Normans and 
the Popes in possession of his Greek patrimony in Italy, Alexius 
Commenus, when he ascended the throne of the Caesars, found 
himself master of an attenuated Empire, consisting mainly 
of strips of Grecian seaboard. 

Yet in spite of her shorn territories Constantinople remained 
the greatest city in Europe, not merely in her magnificent site 
and architecture, nor even in her commerce, but in the hold she 
preserved over the imagination of men. 

Athanaric the Goth had exclaimed that the ruler of Constanti- 
nople must be a god : eleventh-century Europe accepted him as 
mortal, but still crowned the lord of so great a city with a halo 
of awe. It was Constantinople that had won the Russians, 
the Bulgars, and the Slavs from heathenism to Christianity, not 
to the Catholicism of Western Europe but the Greek interpreta- 
tion of the Christian faith called by its believers the 'orthodox'. 
It was Constantinople whose gold coin, 'the byzant', was 
recognized as the medium of exchange between merchants of all 
nations. It was Constantinople again, her wealth, her palaces, 
her glory of pomp and government, that drew Russian, Norse, 
and Slav adventurers to serve as mercenaries in the Emperor's 



144 The Early Crusades 

army, just as auxiliaries had clamoured of old to join the Roman 
eagles. Amongst the ' Varangar ' bodyguard, responsible for 
the safety of the Emperor's person, were to be found at one 
time many followers of Harold the Saxon, who, escaping from a 
conquered England, gladly entered the service of a new master 
to whom the name ' Norman' was also anathema. 

Alexius Commenus was in character like his Empire — a shrink- 
age from the dimensions of former days. There was nothing of 
the practical genius of a Constantine in his unscrupulous ability 
to mould small things to his advantage; nothing of the heroic 
Charlemagne in his eminently calculating courage. Yet his 
daughter, Anna Commena, who wrote a history of his reign, 
regarded him as a model of imperial virtues; and his court, 
that had ceased to distinguish pomp from greatness and elaborate 
ceremonial from glory, echoed this fiction. It was this mixture 
of pretension and weakness, of skill and cunning, of nerve and 
treachery, so typical of the later Eastern Emperors, that made 
the nations of Western Europe, while they admired Byzantium, 
yet use the word ' Byzantine ' as a term of mingled contempt and 
dislike. 

The Emperor, on his part, had no reason to love his Western 
neighbours. The Popes had robbed him of the Exarchate 
of Ravenna : they had set up a Headship of the Church in Rome 
deaf to the claims of Constantinople. When in the eighth 
century the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, 1 earned the nickname of 
' Iconoclast ', or ■ Image-breaker ', by a campaign of destruction 
amongst devotional pictures and images that he denounced 
as idolatrous, Rome definitely refused to accept this ruling 
on behalf of Western Christendom. 

This was the beginning of the actual schism between the 
Eastern and Western Churches that had been always alien 
in their outlook. In the ninth century the breach widened, 
for Pope Nicholas I supported a Patriarch, or Bishop of 
the Eastern Church, deposed by the Emperor and excom- 
municated his rival and successor, while subsequent disputes 
were rendered irreconcilable in the middle of the eleventh 

1 See p. 77. 



The Venetian Republic 145 

century when the Patriarch of Constantinople closed the Latin 
churches and convents in his diocese and publicly declared 
the views of Rome heretical. 

Besides the Pope at Rome the Eastern Empire possessed 
other foes in Italy. Chief of these were the Normans, who, not 
content with acquiring Naples, had, under the leadership of 
Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund, captured the famous 
port of Durazzo on the Adriatic and invaded Macedonia. From 
this province they were only evicted by Alexius Commenus after 
wearying campaigns of guerrilla warfare to which his military 
ability was better suited than to pitched battles or shock tactics. 

More subtly dangerous than either Pope or Normans was the 
commercial rivalry of the merchant cities of the Mediterranean, 
Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. It was Venice who from behind her 
barrier of islands had watched Attila the Hun lead away his 
armies in impotent rage. 1 It was Venice again who of the 
North Italian states successfully resisted the feudal domination 
of Western Emperors and kept her own form of republican 
government inviolate of external control. It was the young 
Venice, the ' Queen of the Adriatic ' as her sons and daughters 
proudly called her, that could alone in her commercial splendour 
and arrogance compare with the dying glory of Constantinople. 

Alexius Commenus in his struggles against Robert Guiscard 
had been compelled to call twice upon Venice for the assistance 
of her fleet ; but he paid dearly for this alliance in the trading 
privileges he was forced to grant in Eastern waters. Wherever 
in the Orient Venetian merchants landed to exchange goods 
they were quick to establish a political footing; and the world 
mart on the Adriatic, into which poured the silks and dyes, the 
sugar and spices of Asia, built up under the rule of its ' Doges', or 
Dukes, a national as well as a commercial reputation. 

In 1095 necessity spurred Alexius Commenus to appeal not 
merely to Venice for succour but to Pope Urban II and all the 
leading princes of Western Europe. 

'From Jerusalem to the Aegean,' he wrote, 'the Turkish 
hordes have mastered all : their galleys, sweeping the Black Sea 

1 See p. 45. 

2627 L 



146 The Early Crusades 

and the Mediterranean, threaten the imperial city itself, which, 
if fall it must, had better fall into the hands of Latins than ot 
Pagans.' 

These Turks, or ' Tartars ', to whom he referred, were the 
cause of the Eastern Empire's sudden danger. Descendants of a 
Mongol race in central Asia, of which the Huns were also 
an offshoot, they turned their faces westward some centuries 
later than the ancestors of Attila, fired by the same love of battle 
and bloodshed and the same contempt for civilization. To them 
the wonderful Arabian kingdom, moulded by successive Caliphs 
of Bagdad out of Eastern art, luxury, and mysticism, held no 
charm save loot. Conquered Greece had endowed Rome with 
its culture, but the inheritance of Haroun al-Raschid bequeathed 
to its conquerors only the fighting creed of Islam. 

Mahometans in faith, the Turkish armies, more dangerous 
than ever because more fanatical, swept over Persia, Syria, 
Palestine, and Asia Minor, subjugating Arabs and Christians 
until they came almost to the straits of the Bosporus. Here 
it was that they forced Alexius Commenus to realize his 
imminent danger and to turn to his enemies in Europe for 
the protection of his tottering Empire. 

The Latins, or Christians of the West, to whom he appealed, 
had reasons enough of their own for answering him with ready 
promises of men and money. From the early days of the 
Church it had been the custom of pious folk, or of sinners 
anxious to expiate some crime, to set out in small companies to 
visit the Holy Places in Jerusalem where tradition held that 
Christ had preached, prayed, and suffered, that there they might 
give praise to God and seek His pardon. These 'pilgrimages', 
with their mixture of |£)od comradeship, danger, and discomfort, 
had become very dear to the popular mind, and, if not encouraged 
by the Mahometan Arabs, had been at least tolerated. 
' Hospitals ', or sanctuaries, were built for the refreshment of 
weary or sick travellers, and pilgrims on the payment of a toll 
could wander practically where they chose. 
. On the advent of the Turks all was changed : the Holy Places 
became more and more difficult to visit, Christians were stoned 



The First Crusade 147 

and beaten, mulcted of their last pennies in extortionate tolls, 
and left to die of hunger or flung into dungeons for ransom. 

Tradition says that a certain French hermit called Peter, who 
visited Jerusalem during the worst days of Turkish rule, went 
one night to the Holy Sepulchre weeping at the horrors he 
had seen, and as he knelt in prayer, it seemed to him that 
Christ himself stood before him and bade him 'rouse the Faith- 
ful to the cleansing of the Holy Places'. With this mission in 
mind he at once left the Holy Land and sought Pope Urban II, 
who had already received the letter of Alexius Commenus and now, 
fired by the hermit's enthusiasm, willingly promised his support. 

Whether Urban was persuaded by Peter or no is a matter of 
doubt, but he at any rate summoned a council to Clermont in 
1095, and there in moving words besought the chivalry of Europe 
to set aside its private feuds and either recover the Holy Places 
or die before the city where Christ had given his life for the world. 
It is likely that he spoke from mixed motives. A true inheritor 
of the theories of Gregory VII, he could not but recognize in 
the prospect of a religious war, where the armies of Europe 
would fight under the papal banner and at the papal will, 
the exaltation of the Roman See. Was there not also the hope 
of bringing the Greek Church into submission to the Roman as 
the outcome of an alliance with the Greek Empire? Might not 
many turbulent feudal princes be persuaded to journey to 
the East, who by happy chance would return no more to trouble 
Europe ? 

Such calculations could Urban's ambitions weave, but with 
them were entwined unworldly visions that lent him a force and 
eloquence that no calculations could have supplied. Wherever 
he spoke the surging crowd would rush forward with the shout 
Dens vult, ' It is the will of God,' and this became the battle-cry 
of the crusaders. 

'The whole world,' says a contemporary, 'desired to go to the 
tomb of our Lord at Jerusalem .... First of all went the 
meaner people, then the men of middle rank, and lastly very 
many kings, counts, marquesses, and bishops, and, a thing that 
never happened before, many women turned their steps in the 
same direction.' 

L 2 



148 The Early Crusades 

The order is significant and shows that the appeal of Urban 
and of Peter the Hermit had touched first the heart of the 
masses to whom the rich man's temptation to hesitate and think 
of the morrow were of no account. Corn had been dear in 
France before the Council of Clermont owing to bad harvests ; 
but the speculators who had bought up the grain to sell at a high 
price to those who later must eat or die found it left on their 
hands after the council was over. The men and women of 
France were selling not buying, regardless of possible famine, 
that they might find money to fulfil their burning desire to go 
to the Holy Land and there win the Holy Sepulchre and gain 
pardon for their sins as Pope and hermit had promised 
them. 

The ordinary crusading route passed through the Catholic 
kingdom of Hungary to Bulgaria and thence to Constantinople, 
where the various companies of armed pilgrims had agreed to 
meet. It was with the entry into Bulgaria, whose 'orthodox 5 1 
king was secretly hostile to the pilgrims, that trouble began. 
Food and drink were grudged by the suspicious natives even to 
those willing to pay their way ; whereupon the utterly undis- 
ciplined forces could not be prevented from retaliating on this 
inhospitality by fire and pillage. A species of warfare ensued in 
which Latin stragglers were cut off and murdered by mountain 
robbers, while the many ' undesirables ', who had joined the 
crusaders more in hope of loot and adventure than of pardon, 
brought an evil reputation on their comrades by their greed and 
the brutality they exhibited towards the peasants. 

Reason enough was here to account for the pathetic failure of 
the advance-guard of crusaders, the poor, the fanatic, the dis- 
reputable, drawn together in no settled organization and with no 
leaders of military repute. 

Alexius Commenus, who had demanded an army, not a rabble, 
dealt characteristically with the problem by shipping these first 
crusaders in haste and unsupported to Asia Minor. There he 
left them to fall a prey to the Turks, disease, and their own 

1 See p. 143. 



The First Crusade 149 

inadequacy, so that few ever saw the coasts of their native lands 
again. 

If the First Crusade began in tragedy it ended in triumph, 
through the arrival in Constantinople of a second force from the 
West, this time of disciplined troops under the chief military 
leaders of Europe. Alexius Commenus had good cause to 
remember the prowess of his old enemy, Bohemund, son of 
Robert Guiscard, who rode at the head of his Sicilian Normans, 
while other names of repute were Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of 
Lorraine, and Robert, the eldest son of William the Conqueror, 
with Archbishop Odo of Bayeux, his uncle. 

'Some of the crusaders', wrote Anna Commena, 'were guile- 
less men and women, marching in all simplicity to worship at the 
tomb of Christ ; but there were others of a more wicked kind, to 
wit Bohemund and the like : such men had but one object — to 
obtain possession of the imperial city.' 

These suspicions, perhaps well founded, were natural to the 
daughter of the untrustworthy Alexius"*Commenus, who trusted 
nobody. Hating to entertain at his court so many well-armed 
and often insolent strangers, yet fearing in his heart to aid their 
advance lest they should set up a rival kingdom to his own, the 
Emperor, having cajoled the leaders into promises of homage 
for any conquests they might make, at length transported them 
and their followers across the Hellespont. 

The Christian campaign began with the capture of Nicea in 
1097, followed by a victorious progress through Asia Minor. 
For nearly a year the crusaders besieged and then were in their 
turn besieged in Antioch, enduring tortures of hunger, thirst, 
and disease. When courage flagged and hope seemed nearly 
dead, it was the supposed discovery, by one of the chaplains, of 
the lance that had pierced Christ's side as he hung upon the 
Cross that kept the Christians from surrender. With this 
famous relic borne in their midst by the papal legate, the 
crusaders flung the gates of Antioch wide and issued forth in 
a charge so irresistible in its certainty of victory that the Turks 
broke and fled. The defeat became a rout, and Antioch 
remained as a Christian principality under Bohemund, when 



150 The Early Crusades 

the crusaders marched southwards along the coast route towards 
Jerusalem. 

They came in sight of this, the goal of their ambitions, on 7th 
June, 1099, not garbed as knights and soldiers but barefooted as 
humble pilgrims, kneeling in an ecstasy of awe upon the Mount 
of Olives. This mood of prayer passed rapidly into one of fierce 
determination, and on 15th June Godfrey de Bouillon and his 
Lorrainers forced a breach in the massive walls, and, hacking 
their way with sword and spear through the streets, met their 
fellow crusaders triumphantly entering from another side. The 
scene that followed, while in keeping with mediaeval savagery, 
has left a shameful stain upon the Christianity it professed 
to represent. Turks, Arabs, and Jews, old men and women, 
children and babies, thousands of a defenceless population, were 
deliberately butchered as a sacrifice to the Christ who, dying, 
preached forgiveness. The crusaders rode their horses up to the 
knees in the blood of that human shambles. 'There might 
no prayers nor crying of mercy prevail,' says an eyewitness. 
' Such a slaughter of pagan folk had never been seen nor heard 
of. None knew their number, save God alone.' 

Their mission accomplished, the majority of crusaders turned 
their faces homewards, but before they went they elected Godfrey 
de Bouillon to be the first ruler of the new Latin kingdom 
of Jerusalem, with Antioch and Edessa in the north as dependent 
principalities. 

Godfrey reigned for almost a year, bearing the title ' Guardian 
of the Holy Grave', since he refused to be crowned master of a 
city where Christ had worn a wreath of thorns. His protest is 
typical of the genuine humility and love of God that mingled so 
strangely in his veins with pride and cruelty. When he 
died he left a reputation for courage and justice that wove 
around his memory romance and legends like the tales of 
Charlemagne. 

His immediate successors were a brother and nephew, and it 
is in the reign of the latter that we first hear mention of the 
Military Orders, so famous in the crusading annals of the Middle 
Ages. These were the ' Hospitallers ' or ' Knights of St. John ',. 



The Military Orders 1 5 1 

inheritors of the rents and property belonging to the old 
' Hospital ' founded for pilgrims in Jerusalem, and the 
'Templars', so called from their residence near the sight of 
Solomon's Temple. 

Both Orders were bound like the monks by the vows of 
poverty, obedience, and chastity ; but the work demanded of 
them, instead of labour in the fields, was perpetual war against 
the infidel. 'When the Templars are summoned to arms,' said 
a thirteenth-century writer, ' they inquire not of the number but 
of the position of their foe. They are lions in war, lambs in the 
house : to the enemies of Christ fierce and implacable, but to 
Christians kind and gracious.' 

Yet a third Order, that of the Teutonic Knights, was founded 
in the twelfth century, arising like that of the Knights of St. John 
out of a hospital, but one that had been built by German 
merchants for crusaders of their own race. At the end of the 
thirteenth century the Order removed to the southern Baltic, 
and on these cold inhospitable shores embarked on a crusade 
against the heathen Lithuanians. It is of interest to students of 
modern history to note that in the sixteenth century the last 
Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights became converted to the 
doctrines of Luther, suppressed his Order, and absorbed the 
estates into an hereditary fief, the Duchy of Brandenburg. On 
the ' Mark ' ' and Duchy of Brandenburg, both founded with 
entirely military objects, was the future kingdom of Prussia 
built. 

The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187) survived for more 
than three-quarters of a century. That it had been established 
with such comparative ease was due not only to the fighting quality 
of the crusaders, but also to the feuds that divided Turkish rulers of 
the House of Seljuk. The Turks far outnumbered the Christians, 
and whenever the Caliphs of Bagdad and Cairo should sink their 
rivalries, or one Moslem ruler in the East gain supremacy over 
all others, the days of the small Latin kingdom in Palestine 
would be numbered. In the meantime the Latins maintained 
their position with varying fortune, now with the aid of fresh 

1 See p. 131. 



152 The Early Crusades 

recruits from Europe and Genoese and Venetian sailors, capturing 
coast towns, now losing land-outposts there were insufficient 
garrisons to protect. 

It was the loss of Edessa that roused Europe to its Second 
Crusade, this time through the eloquence of St. Bernard of 
Clairvaux,who persuaded not only Louis VII of France and his 
wife, Queen Eleanor, but also the at first reluctant Emperor 
Conrad III, to bind the Cross on their arms and go to the succour 
of Christendom. ' The Christian who slays the unbeliever in 
the Holy War is sure of his reward, more sure if he is slain.' 

The pictures of the glories of martyrdom and of earthly con- 
quests painted by the famous monk were so vivid that on one 
occasion he was forced to tear up his own robes to provide 
sufficient crosses for the eager multitude, but the triumph to 
which he called so great a part of the populations of France and 
Germany proved the beckoning hand of death and failure. 

Both the King and Emperor reached Palestine — Louis VII 
even visited Jerusalem — but when they sailed homewards they 
had accomplished nothing of any lasting value. Edessa remained 
under Mahometan rule and the Christians had been forced to 
abandon the siege of Damascus that they had intended as a 
prelude to a victorious campaign. What was worse was that 
Louis and Conrad had left the chivalry of their armies in a track 
of whitening bones where they had retreated, victims not merely 
of Turkish prowess and numbers but of Christian feuds, Greek 
treachery, the failure of food supplies, and disease. 

The Byzantine Empire owed to the first crusaders large tracts 
of territory recovered from the Turks in Asia Minor ; but, 
angered by broken promises of homage on the part of Latin 
rulers, the Greeks repaid this debt in the Second Crusade by 
acting as spies and secret allies of the Mahometans. On 
occasions they were even to be found fighting openly side by 
side with the Turks, yet more merciless than these pagans in 
their brutal refusal to give food and drink to the stragglers of the 
Latin armies whom they had so basely betrayed. 

The widows and orphans of France and Germany, when their 
rulers returned reft both of glory and men-at-arms, reviled 



Fall of Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem 153 

St. Bernard as a false prophet ; but though he responded sternly 
that the guilt lay not with God but in the worldliness of those 
who had taken the Cross, he was sorely troubled at the shatter- 
ing of his own hopes. 

' The Sons of God ', he wrote wearily, ' have been overthrown 
in the desert, slain with the sword, or destroyed by famine. We 
promised good things and behold disorder. The judgements of 
the Lord are righteous, but this one is an abyss so deep that I 
must call him blessed who is not scandalized therein.' 

For some years after the Second Crusade Western Europe 
turned a deaf ear to entreaties for help from Palestine, and the 
Latin kingdom of Jerusalem continued to decline steadily not 
only in territory but in its way of life. The ennervating 
climate, the temptations to an unhealthy luxury that forgot 
Christian ideals, the almost unavoidable intermarriage of the 
races of East and West : all these sapped the vitality and 
efficiency of the crusading settlers ; while the establishment of 
a feudal government at Jerusalem resulted in the usual quarrels 
amongst tenants-in-chief and their sub-tenants. In these feuds the 
Hospitallers and Templars joined with an avaricious rivalry 
unworthy of their creed of self-denial. 

By 1 183 Guy de Lusignan, who had succeeded in seizing the 
crown of Jerusalem by craft on the failure of the royal line, 
could only count on the lukewarm support of the majority of 
Latin barons. Thus handicapped he found himself suddenly 
confronted by a union of the Turks of Egypt and Syria under 
Saladin, Caliph of Cairo, a leader so capable and popular that 
the downfall of divided enemies was inevitable. 

At Hattin, near the Lake of Tiberias, on a rocky, waterless 
spot, the Christians and Mahometans met for a decisive battle 
in the summer of 1187. The Latins, hemmed in by superior 
numbers, and tortured by the heat and thirst, fought desperately 
beneath the relic of the True Cross that they had borne with 
them as an incitement to their courage ; but the odds were too 
great, and King Guy himself was forced to surrender when the 
defeat of his army had turned into a rout. 

In the autumn of the same year Jerusalem, after less than a 



154 The Early Crusades 

month's siege, opened her gates to the victor. Very different 
was the entry of Saladin to that of the first crusaders ; for instead 
of a general massacre the Christian population was put to ransom, 
the Sultan and his brother as an ' acceptable alms to Allah ' free- 
ing hundreds of the poorer classes for whom enough money could 
not be provided. 

Europe received the news that the Holy Sepulchre had re- 
turned to the custody of the infidel with a shame and indignation 
that was expressed in the Third Crusade. This time, however, 
no straggling bands of enthusiasts were encouraged; and though 
the expedition was approved by the Pope, neither he nor any 
famous churchman, such as Peter the Hermit or St. Bernard of 
Clairvaux, were responsible for the majority of volunteers. 

The Third Crusade was in character a military campaign of 
three great nations : of the Germans under the Emperor 
Frederick Barbarossa, or the ' Red Beard ' ; of the French under 
Philip II ; and of the English under Richard the ' Lion-Heart'. 
Other princes famous enough in their lands for wealth and prow- 
ess sailed also; and had there been union in that great host 
Saladin might well have trembled for his Empire. He was saved 
by the utter lack of cohesion and petty jealousies of his enemies 
as well as by his statecraft and military skill. 

While English and French rulers still haggled over the terms 
of an alliance that would allow them to leave their lands with an 
easy mind, Frederick Barbarossa, the last to take the Cross, set 
out from Germany, rapidly crossed Hungary and Bulgaria, re- 
duced the Greek Emperor to hostile inactivity by threats and 
military display, and began a victorious campaign through Asia 
Minor. Here fate intervened to help the Mahometans, for 
while fording a river in Cilicia the Emperor was swept from his 
horse by the current and drowned. So passed away Frederick 
the ' Red Beard ', and with him what his strong personality had 
made an army. Some of the Teutons returned home, while 
those who remained degenerated into a rabble, easy victims for 
their enemies' spears and arrows. 

In the meantime Richard of England (1189-99) and Philip of 
France had clasped the hand of friendship, and, having levied the 



The Third Crusade 155 

Saladin Tithe, a tax of one-tenth of the possessions of all their 
subjects, in order to pay their expenses, set sail eastwards from 
Marseilles. Both were young and eager for military glory ; 
but the French king could plot and wait to achieve the ultimate 
success he desired while in Richard the statesman was wholly 
sunk in the soldier of fortune. 

To mediaeval chroniclers there was something dazzling in the 
Lion-Heart's physical strength, and in the sheer daring with 
which he would force success out of apparently inevitable failure, 
or realize some dangerous enterprise. 

'Though fortune wreaks her spleen on whomsoever she 
pleases, yet was he not drowned for all her adverse waves.' 

' The Lord of Ages gave him such generosity of soul and 
endued him with such virtues that he seemed rather to belong 
to earlier times than these.' 

'To record his deeds would cramp the writer's finger joints 
and stun the hearer's mind.' 

Such are a few of the many flattering descriptions the obvious 
sincerity of which paints the English king as he seemed to the 
men who fought beside him. 

A clever strategist, a born leader in battle, fearless himself, 
and with a restless energy that inspired him when sick to be 
carried on cushions in order to direct the fire of his stone- 
slingers, Richard turned his golden qualities of generalship to 
dust by his utter lack of diplomacy and tact. Of gifts such as 
these, that are one-half of kingship, he was not so much ignorant 
as heedless. He ' willed ' to do things like his great ancestor, 
the Conqueror, but his sole weapon was his right hand, not the 
subtlety of his brain. 

'The King of England had gallows erected outside his camp 
to hang thieves and robbers on . . . deeming it no matter of what 
country the criminals were, he considered every man as his own 
and left no wrong unavenged.' 

This typical high-handed action, no doubt splendid in theory 
as a method of discouraging the crimes that had helped to ruin 
previous campaigns, was, when put into practice, sufficient alone 
to account for the hatred Richard inspired amongst rulers whose 
subjects he thus ohose to judge and execute at will. The King 



156 The Early Crusades 

of France, we are told, ' winked at the wrongs his men inflicted 
and received,' but he gained friends, while Richard's progress 
was a series of embittered feuds, accepted light-heartedly with- 
out any thought of his own future interests or of those of the 
crusade. 

Open rupture with Philip II of France was brought about 
almost before they had left the French coasts through Richard's 
repudiation of his ally's sister, to whom he had been bethrothed, 
since the English king was now determined on a match with 
Berengaria, the daughter of the King of Navarre. 

In South Italy he acquired his next enemies in both claimants 
then disputing the crown of Sicily, but before he sailed away 
he had battered one of the rivals, the Norman, Tancred, into an 
outwardly submissive ally after a battle in the streets of Messina. 
The other rival, Henry, son of Frederick Barbarossa, and after- 
wards the Emperor Henry VI, remained his enemy, storing up 
a grudge against him in the hopes of a suitable opportunity for 
displaying it. 

From Cyprus Richard, pursuing military glory, drove its 
Greek ruler because he had dared to imprison some shipwrecked 
Englishmen ; and thus, adding an island to his dominions and 
the Eastern Emperor to his list of foes, arrived at last in 
Palestine, in the summer of 1191, just in time to join Philip II 
in the siege of Acre. 

' The two kings and peoples did less together than they would 
have done separately, and each set but light store by the other.' 
So the tale runs in the contemporary chronicle ; and when Acre 
at last surrendered the feuds between the English and French 
had grown so irreconcilable that Philip II, who had fallen sick, 
sulkily declared that he had fulfilled his crusading vow and 
departed homewards. Not long afterwards went Leopold, Arch- 
duke of Austria, nursing cold rage against Richard in his heart 
because of an insult to his banner, that, planted on an earthwork 
beside the arms of England, had been contemptuously flung 
into the ditch below. 

The Lion-Heart was now master of the enterprise in Palestine, 
a terror to the Turks, who would use his name to frighten 



The Third Crusade 157 

their unruly children into submission ; but though he remained 
fourteen months, the jealousies and rivalries of his camp, with 
which he was not the man to contend, kept him dallying on the 
coast route to Jerusalem, unable to proceed by open warfare or 
to get the better of the wily Saladin in diplomacy. 

News came that Philip II and the Emperor Henry VI were 
plotting with his brother John for his ruin at home, and Richard, 
weary at heart and sick in health, agreed to a three years and 
eight months' truce that left the Christians in the possession of 
the seaports of Jaffa and Tyre, with the coastal territory between 
them, and gave pilgrims leave to visit Jerusalem untaxed. He 
himself refused with tears in his eyes even to gaze from a distant 
height on the city he could not conquer ; but, vowing he would 
return, he set sail for the West in the autumn of 1192, and with 
his departure the Third Crusade ended. 

There were to be many other crusades, but none that expressed 
in the same way as these first three expeditions the united 
aspirations of Western Europe for the recovery of the land of the 
Holy Sepulchre. National jealousies had ruined the chances of 
the Third Crusade, and with every year the spirit of nationality 
was to grow in strength and make common action less possible 
for Europe. 

There is another reason also for the changing character of 
the Crusades, namely, the loss of the religious enthusiasm in 
which they had their origin. Men and women had believed 
that the cross on their arms could turn sinners into saints, break 
down battlements, and destroy infidels, as if by miracle. When 
they found that human passions flourished as easily in Palestine 
as at home and that the way of salvation was, as ever, the path 
of hard labour and constant effort, they were disillusioned, and 
eager multitudes no longer clamoured to go to the East. The 
Crusades did not stop suddenly, but degenerated with a few 
exceptions into mere political enterprises, patronized now by 
one nation, now by another : the armies recruited by mere love 
of adventure, lust of battle, or the desire for plunder. 

If Western Christendom had gained no other blessing by 
them, the early Crusades at least freed the nations at a critical 



158 The Early Crusades 

moment from a large proportion of the unruly baronage that 
had been a danger to commerce and good government. England 
paid heavily in gold for the Third Crusade ; but the money 
supplied by merchants and towns was well spent in securing 
from the Lion-Heart privileges and charters that laid the founda- 
tions of municipal liberty. 

In France the results of the Second Crusade had been for the 
moment devastating. Whole villages marched away, cities and 
castles stood empty, and in some provinces it was said 'scarce 
one man remained to seven women '. In the orgy of selling that 
marked this exodus lands and possessions rapidly changed 
hands, the smaller fiefs tending to be absorbed by the larger fiefs 
and many of these in their turn by the crown. Aided also by 
other causes, the King of France with his increased demesnes 
and revenues came to assume a predominant position in the 
national life. 

Perhaps the chief effect of the Crusades on Europe generally 
was the stimulus of new influences. Men and women, if they 
live in a rut and feed their brains continually on the same ideas, 
grow prejudiced. It is good for them to travel and come in 
contact with opposite views of life and different manners and 
customs, however much it may annoy them at the time. The 
Crusades provided this kind of stimulus not only to the commerce 
of Mediterranean ports but in the world of thought, literature, 
and art. The necessity of transport for large armies improved 
shipbuilding; the cunning of Turkish foes the ingenuity of 
Christian armourers and engineers ; the influence of Byzantine 
architecture and mosaics the splendour of Venice in stone and 
colour. 

Western Europe continued to hate the East ; but she could not 
live without her silks, spices, and perfumes, nor forget to dream 
of the fabulous wonders of Cathay. Thus the age of the 
Crusades will be seen at last to merge its failures in the suc- 
cesses of an age of discovery, that were to lay bare a new West 
and another road to the Orient. 



XIII 

THE MAKING OF FRANCE 

Amongst those who took the Cross during the Second Crusade 
had been Louis VII of France and his wife, Queen Eleanor. 
They were an ill-matched pair, the King of mediocre ability, 
weak, peace-loving, and pious; Eleanor, like all the House of 
Aquitaine, to which she belonged, imperious, fierce-willed, and 
without scruples where she loved or hated. Restless excitement 
had prompted her journey to Palestine ; and Louis was impelled 
by the scandal to which her conduct there gave rise, and also by 
his annoyance that they had no son, to divorce her soon after 
they returned home. 

The foolishness of this step from a political point of view can 
be gauged by studying a map of France in the middle of the 
twelfth century, and remembering that, though king of the 
whole country in name, Louis as feudal overlord could depend 
on little but the revenues and forces to be raised from his own 
estates. These lay in a small block round Paris, while away to 
the north, east, and south were the provinces of tenants-in-chief 
three or four times as extensive in area as those of the royal 
House of Capet. By marrying Eleanor, Countess of Poitou and 
Duchess of Aquitaine, Louis had become direct ruler of the 
middle and south-west of France as well as of his own crown 
demesnes, but when he divorced his wife he at once forfeited 
her possessions. 

Worse from his point of view was to follow ; for Eleanor 
made immediate use of her freedom to marry Henry, Count of 
Anjou, a man fourteen years her junior, but the most impor- 
tant tenant-in-chief of the King of France and therefore, if 
he chose, not unlikely to prove that king's most dangerous 
enemy. This Henry, besides being Count of Anjou, Maine, 



160 The Making of France 

and Touraine, was also Duke of Normandy and King of England, 
for he was a grandson of Henry I, and had in 1154 succeeded 
the feeble Stephen, of the anarchy of whose reign we gave 
a slight description in another chapter. 1 

Before dealing with the results of Henry's marriage with the 
heiress of Aquitaine it is well to note his work as King ol 
England, for this was destined to be the greatest and most lasting 
of all the many tasks he undertook. In character Henry was 
the exact opposite of Stephen. Where the other had wavered 
he pressed^ forward, utterly determined to be master of his own 
land. One by one he besieged the rebel barons, and levelled 
with the ground the castles they had built in order to torture 
and oppress their neighbours. He also took from them the 
crown lands which Stephen had recklessly given away in the 
effort to buy popularity and support. When he found that many 
of these nobles had usurped the chief offices of state he replaced 
them as quickly as he could by men of humble rank and of his 
own choosing. In this way he appointed a Londoner, Thomas 
Becket, whom he had first created Chancellor, to be Archbishop 
of Canterbury; but the impetuous choice proved one of his 
few mistakes. 

Henry was so self-confident himself that he was apt to under- 
rate the abilities of those with whom life brought him in contact 
and to believe that every other will must necessarily bow to his 
own. It is certain that he found it difficult to pause and listen to 
reason, for his restless energy was ever spurring him on to fresh 
ambitions, and he could not bear to waste time, as he thought, 
in listening to criticisms on what he had already decided. 
Chroniclers describe how he would fidget impatiently or draw 
pictures during Mass, commending the priest who read fastest, 
while he would devote odd moments of his day to patching his 
old clothes for want of something more interesting to do. 

Henry II was so able that haste in his case did not mean 
that his work was slipshod. He had plenty of foresight, and 
did not content himself with destroying those of his subjects 
who were unruly. He knew that he must win the support of 

1 See p. 122. 



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1 62 The Making of France 

the English people if he hoped to build up his estates in France, 
and this, though destined to bear no lasting fruit, was ever his 
chief ambition. Henry II was one of the greatest of English 
kings, but he had been brought up in France and remained 
more of an Angevin than an Englishman at heart. 

Instead of driving his barons into sulky isolation Henry 
summoned them frequently to his Magnum Concilium, or ' Great 
Council ', and asked their advice. When they objected to 
serving with their followers in France as often as he wished, 
he arranged a compromise that was greatly to his advantage. 
This was the institution of ' Scutage ', or 'Shield-money', a tax 
paid by the barons in order to escape military service abroad. 
With the funds that ' scutage ' supplied Henry could hire mer- 
cenary troops, while the feudal barons lost a military training- 
ground. 

Besides consulting his 'Great Council', destined to develop 
into our national parliament, Henry strengthened the Curia 
Regis, or ' King's Court ', that his grandfather, Henry I, had 
established to deal with questions of justice and finance. The 
barons in the time of Stephen had tried to make their own 
feudal courts entirely independent of royal authority ; but Henry, 
besides establishing a central Court of Justice to which any 
subject who thought himself wronged might appeal for a new 
trial, greatly improved and extended the system of ' Itinerant 
Justices' whose circuits through the country to hold 'Pleas of 
the Crown' had been instituted by Henry I. 

This interference he found was resented not only by the 
feudal courts but also by the Sheriffs of the County Courts, 
the Norman form of the old ' shire-moots ', a popular institution 
of Anglo-Saxon times. Of late years the latter courts had more 
and more fallen under the domination of neighbouring land- 
owners, and in order to free them Henry held an 'Inquest' 
into the doings of the Sheriffs, and deposed many of the great 
nobles who had usurped these offices, replacing them by men 
of lesser rank who would look to him for favour and advice. 

Other sovereigns in Europe adopted somewhat similar means 
of exalting royal authority; but England was fortunate in 



Henry II of England 163 

possessing such popular institutions as the ' moots ' or ' meetings ' 
of the shire and ' hundred ', through which Henry could establish 
his justice, instead of merely through crown officials who 
would have no personal interest in local conditions. 

By the Assize of Clarendon it was decreed that twelve men 
from each hundred and four from each township should decide 
in criminal cases who amongst the accused were sufficiently 
implicated to be justly sentenced by the royal judges. Local 
representatives also were employed on other occasions during 
Henry's reign in assisting his judges in assessing taxes and 
in deciding how many weapons and of what sort the ordinary 
freeman might fittingly carry to the safety of his neighbours and 
of himself. In civil cases, as when the ownership of land or 
personal property was in dispute, twelve ' lawful men ' of the 
neighbourhood, or in certain cases twelve Knights of the Shire, 
were to be elected to help the Sheriff arrive at a just decision. 
In this system of ' recognition ', as it was called, lay the germ of 
our modern jury. 

It is probable that the knights and representatives of the 
hundreds and townships grumbled continually at the trouble and 
expense to which the King's legislation put them; for neither 
they nor Henry II himself would realize that they were 
receiving a splendid education in the A B C of self-government 
that must be the foundation of any true democracy. Yet a few 
generations later, when Henry's weak grandson and namesake 
Henry III misruled England, the Knights of the Shire were 
already accepted as men of public experience, and their repre- 
sentatives summoned to a parliament to defend the liberties 
of England. 

Henry II used popular institutions and crown officials as 
levers against the independence of his baronage, but the chief 
struggle of his reign in England was not with the barons so 
much as with the Church. Thomas Becket as Chancellor had 
been Henry's right hand in attacking feudal privileges : he had 
warned his master that as a leading Churchman his love might 
turn to hate, his help to opposition. The King refused to believe 
him, thrust the burden of the archbishopric of Canterbury on 

m 2 



164 The Making of France 

his unwilling shoulders, and then found to his surprise and rage 
that he had secured the election of a very Hildebrand, who held 
so high a conception of the dignity of the Church that it clashed 
with royal demands at every turn. 

One of the chief subjects of dispute was the claim of the 
Church to reserve for her jurisdiction all cases that affected 
'clerks', that is, not only priests, but men employed in the 
service of the Church, such as acolytes or choristers. The 
King insisted that clerks convicted in ecclesiastical courts of 
serious crimes should be handed over to the royal courts for 
secular punishment. His argument was that if a clerk had 
committed a murder the ecclesiastical judge was not allowed 
by Canon law to deliver a death-sentence, and so could do no 
more than 'unfrock' the guilty man and fine or imprison him. 
Thus a clerk could live to commit two murders where a layman 
would by command of the royal judges be hung at the first 
offence. 

Becket, on his side, would not swerve from his opinion that 
it was sacrilege for royal officials to lay hands on a priest or 
clerk whether 'criminous' or not; and when Henry embodied 
his suggestions of royal supremacy in a decree called the 
Constitutions of Clarendon, the Archbishop publicly refused 
to sign his agreement to them. Threats and insults were heaped 
upon him by angry courtiers, and one of his attendants, terrified 
by the scene, exclaimed, 'Oh, n^ master, this is a fearful day!' 
'The Day of Judgement will be yet more fearful,' answered the 
undaunted Becket, and in the face of his fearlessness no one 
at the moment dared to lay hands on him. 

Shortly afterwards Becket fled abroad, hoping to win the 
support of Rome, but the Pope to whom he appealed did not 
wish to quarrel with the King of England, and used his influence 
to patch up an agreement that was far too vague to have any 
binding strength. Thomas Becket returned to Canterbury, but 
exile had not modified his opinions, and he had hardly landed 
before he once more appeared in open opposition to Henry's 
wishes, excommunicating those bishops who had dared to act 
during his absence without his leave. 



The Becket Controversy 165 

The rest of the story is well known— the ungovernable rage 
of the Angevin king at an obstinacy as great as his own, his 
rash cry, ' Is my house so full of fools and dastards that none 
will avenge me on this upstart clerk?' and then his remorse 
on learning of the four knights who had taken him at his word 
and murdered the Archbishop as he knelt, still undaunted, on 
the altar steps of Canterbury Cathedral. 

So great was the horror and indignation of Europe, even 
of those who were devoted to Henry's cause, that the King 
was driven to strip and scourge himself before the tomb of 
Thomas the Martyr, as a public act of penance, and all question 
of the supremacy of the state over the Church was for the 
time dropped. 

One of the many pilgrims who in the next few years visited 
the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury in the hope of a miracle 
was Louis VII of France, and the miracle that he so earnestly 
desired was the recovery of his son and heir, Philip Augustus, 
from a fever that threatened his life. With many misgivings 
the old king crossed the Channel to the land of a ruler with 
whom he had been at almost constant war since Eleanor of 
Aquitaine's remarriage; but his faith in the vision of the Martyr 
that had prompted his journey was rewarded. Henry received 
him with ' great rejoicing and honour ' after the manner of a 
loyal vassal, and when the French king returned home he found 
his son convalescent. 

The sequel to this journey, however, was the sudden paralysis 
and lingering death of Louis himself, and the coronation of the 
boy prince in whom France was to find so great a ruler. When 
the bells of Paris had rung out the joyous tidings of his birth 
one hot August evening fourteen years before, a young British 
student had put his head out of his lodging window and demanded 
the news. ' A boy,' answered the citizens, ' has been given to 
us this night who by God's grace shall be the hammer of your 
king, and who beyond a doubt shall diminish the power and 
lands of him and his subjects.' One-half of the reign of Philip 
Augustus, le Dieu-donne, or ' God-given ', was the fulfilment 
of this prophecy. 



1 66 The Making of France 

At first sight it would seem as though Henry II of England 
entered the lists against his overlord the Champion of France 
with overwhelming odds in his favour. Ruler of a territory 
stretching from Scotland, his dependency, to the Pyrenees, he 
added to his lands and wealth the brain of a statesman and 
the experience of long years of war and intrigue. What could 
a mere boy, fenced round even in his capital of Paris by turbulent 
barons, hope to achieve against such strength ? 

Yet the weapons of destruction lay ready to his hand, in the 
very household of the Angevin ruler himself. Legend records 
that the blood of some Demon ancestress ran in the veins of the 
Dukes of Aquitaine, endowing them with a ferocity and falseness 
strange even to mediaeval minds ; and the sons whom Eleanor 
bore to her second husband were true to this bad strain if to 
nothing else. ' Dost thou not know ', wrote one of them to his 
father who had reproached him for plotting against his authority, 
' that it is our proper nature that none of us should love the 
other, but that ever brother should strive with brother and son 
against father ? I would not that thou shouldst deprive us of 
our hereditary right and seek to rob us of our nature/ 

Louis VII, in order to weaken Henry II, had encouraged 
this spirit of treachery, and even provided a refuge for Becket 
during his exile : his policy was continued by Philip Augustus, 
who kept open house at Paris for the rebellious family of his 
tenant-in-chief whenever misfortune drove them to fly before 
their father's wrath or ambition brought them to hatch some 
new conspiracy. 

Could Henry have once established the same firm grip he 
had obtained in England over his French possessions, he might 
have triumphed in the struggle with both sons and overlord ; 
but in Poitou and Aquitaine he was merely regarded as Eleanor's 
consort, and the people looked to his heirs as rulers, especially 
to Richard his mother's favourite. Yet never had they suffered 
a reign of greater licence and oppression than under the reckless 
and selfish Lion-Heart. 

After much secret plotting and open rebellion, Henry succeeded 
in imprisoning Eleanor, who had encouraged her sons to defy 



Richard I of England 167 

their father, but with Richard supported by Philip Augustus 
and the strength of southern France he was forced to come 
to terms towards the end of his reign. Though only fifty-six, 
he was already failing in health, and the news that his own 
province of Maine was fast falling to his enemies had broken 
his courage. Cursing the son who had betrayed him, he sullenly 
renewed the oath of homage he owed to Philip, and promised 
to Richard the wealth and independence he had demanded. 
The compact signed he rode away, heavy with fever, to his 
castle of Chinon, and there, indifferent to life, sank into a state 
of stupor. News was brought him that his youngest son John, 
for whom he had carved out a principality in Ireland, had been 
a secret member of the League that had just brought him to 
his knees. ' Is it true,' he asked, roused for the minute, ' that 
,John, my heart . . . has deserted me?' Reading the answer 
in the downcast faces of his attendants, he turned his face to the 
wall. ' Now let things go as they will ... I care no more for 
myself or the world.' Thus the old king died. 

In 1 189 Richard the False succeeded his father, and by 
his prowess in Palestine became Richard ' Coeur-de-Lion '. 
How he quarrelled with Philip II we have seen in the last 
chapter, and that Philip, after the siege of Acre, returned home 
in disgust at the other's overbearing personality. 

Philip Augustus does not cut the same heroic figure on the 
battle-field as his rival : indeed there was no match in Europe 
for the ' Devil of Aquitaine ', who knew not the word fear, and 
the glamour of whose feats of arms has outlasted seven centuries. 
It is in kingship that Philip stands pre-eminent in his own 
age, ready to do battle at the right moment, but still more ready 
to serve France by patient statecraft. While Richard remained 
in Palestine, Philip plotted with the ever-treacherous John for 
their mutual advantage at the absent king's expense ; but their 
enmity remained secret until the joyful news arrived that the 
royal crusader had been captured in disguise on his way home 
by the very Leopold of Austria whose banner he had once 
contemptuously cast into a ditch. 

Now the Duke of Austria's overlord was the Emperor 



1 68 The Making of France 

Henry VI, whose claims to Sicily Richard had often derided; 
and the Lion-Heart, passing from the dungeon of the vassal to 
that of the overlord, did not escape until his subjects had paid 
a huge ransom and he himself had promised to hold England 
as a fief of the Empire. ' Beware, the Devil is loose ', wrote 
Philip to John, when he heard that their united efforts to bribe 
Henry VI into keeping his prisoner permanently had failed. 

The next few years saw a prolonged struggle between the 
French armies that had invaded Normandy and the forces of 
Richard, who, burning for revenge, proved as terrible a rival to 
Philip in the north of France as he had been in the East ; and the 
duel continued until a poisoned arrow pierced the Lion-Heart's 
shoulder, causing bis death. 'God visited the land of France/ 
wrote a chronicler, 'for King Richard was no more.' 

From this moment Philip Augustus began to realize his 
most cherished ambitions, slowly at first, but, thanks to the 
'worst of the English kings', with ever-increasing rapidity. 
John, who had succeeded Richard, was neither statesman nor 
soldier. To meaningless outbursts of Angevin rage he added 
the treachery and cruelty of the House of Aquitaine and a 
sluggish disregard of dignity and ordinary decency peculiarly 
his own. Soon all his subjects were banded together against 
him in fear, hatred, and scorn : the Church, on whose privileges 
he trampled ; the barons, whose wives and daughters were 
unsafe at his court, and whose lands he ravaged and confiscated ; 
the people, whom his mercenaries tortured and oppressed. 
How he quarrelled with the Chapter of Canterbury over its 
choice of an archbishop, defied Pope Innocent III, and then, 
brought to his knees by an interdict, did homage to the Holy 
See for his possessions ; these things, and the signing of Magna 
Charta, the English Charter of Popular Liberties, at Runymede, 
are tales well known in English history. 

What is important to emphasize here in a European history 
is the contrast of the unpopularity that John had gained for 
himself amongst all classes of his own subjects at the very 
moment that Philip Augustus seemed, in French eyes, to be 
indeed their ' God-given ' king. 



French Conquest of Normandy 169 

While John feasted at Rouen messengers brought word that 
Philip was conquering Normandy. ' Let him alone ! Some day 
I will win back all he has taken.' So answered the sluggard, 
but when he at last raised his standard it was already too late. 
The English barons would have followed ' Coeur-de-Lion ' on 
the road to Paris : they were reluctant to take sword out of 
scabbard for John : the very Angevins and Normans were 
beginning to realize that they had more in common with their 
French conquerors than with any king across the Channel. 
Aquitaine, it is true, looked sourly on Philip's progress, but 
the reason was not that she loved England, but that she feared 
the domination of Paris, and made it a systematic part of her 
policy for years to support the ruler who lived farthest away, 
and would therefore be likely to interfere the least in her 
internal affairs. 

In 1214 John made his most formidable effort, dispatching 
an army to Flanders to unite with that of the powerful Flemish 
Count Ferrand, one of Philip's tenants-in-chief, and with the 
Emperor Otto IV, in a combined attack on the northern French 
frontier. At Bouvines the armies met, Philip Augustus, in 
command of his forces, riding with a joyful face ' no less than 
if he had been bidden to a wedding'. 

The battle, when it opened, found him wherever the fight was 
hottest, wielding his sword, encouraging, rallying, until by 
nightfall he remained victor of the field, with the Count of 
Flanders and many another of his chief enemies, including the 
English commander, prisoners at his mercy. 

Philip carried Count Ferrand behind him in chains on his 
triumphal march to Paris, while all the churches along the 
way rang their bells, and the crowds poured forth to cheer their 
king and sing Te Deums. 

' The Battle of Bouvines was perhaps the most important 
engagement ever fought on French soil.' So wrote a modern 
historian before the war of 1914. 

In the days of Louis VII the Kings of France had stood 
dwarfed amid Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine and Counts 
of Flanders and Anjou. Now the son of Louis had defeated 



170 The Making of France 

an emperor, thrown one rebellious tenant-in-chief into a dungeon, 
and from another, the Angevin John, gained as the reward of 
his victory all the long-coveted provinces north of the Loire. 
Even the crown treasury, once so poor, was replete for the time 
with the revenues of the confiscated Norman and Angevin 
estates of English barons, who had been forbidden by their 
sovereign to do homage any more to a French overlord. 

Philip Augustus had shown himself Philip ' the Conqueror ' ; 
but he was something far greater — a king who, like Henry II of 
England, could build as well as destroy. During his reign the 
menace of the old feudal baronage was swept away, and the 
government received its permanent stamp as a servant of 
the monarchy. 

In his dealing with the French Church Philip followed 
the traditions of Pepin the Short and Charlemagne, yet gratifying 
as were his numerous gifts to monasteries and convents, they 
were dovetailed into a scheme of combining the liberal patron 
with the firm master. That good relations between the king and 
clergy resulted was largely due to Philip's policy of replacing 
bishops belonging to powerful families by men of humble origin 
accustomed to subservience. Also he would usually support the 
lesser clergy in their frequent quarrels with their ecclesiastical 
superiors, thus weakening the leaders while he won the affection 
of the rank and file. 

Like John he came into collision with the iron will of Pope 
Innocent III, but on a purely moral question, his refusal to live 
with the Danish princess Ingeborg, to whom he had taken 
a violent and unaccountable dislike on his wedding-day. The 
bride was a girl of eighteen ; she could speak no French, 
her husband's bishops were afraid to uphold her cause whatever 
their secret opinions, but in appealing to the Pope for help she 
gained an unyielding champion. 

In other chapters we shall see Innocent III as a politician and 
a persecutor of heretics : here he stands as the moral leader 
of Europe ; and no estimate of his character and work would be 
fair that neglected this aspect. It was to Innocent's political 
advantage to please the French king, whose help he needed to 



Innocent III and France 171 

chastise the English John and to support a crusade against an 
outburst of heresy in Languedoc. Moreover, he had no armies 
to compel a king who accused his wife of witchcraft to recognize 
her as queen. Yet Innocent believed that Philip was in the 
wrong; and when the French king persuaded his bishops to 
divorce him and then promptly married again, papal letters 
proceeded to denounce the divorce as a farce and the new 
marriage as illegal. 

' Recall your lawful wife,' wrote Innocent, ' and then we will 
hear all that you can righteously urge. If you do not do this 
no power shall move us to right or left until justice be done.' 
This letter was followed by threats of excommunication, and 
after some months by an interdict that reduced Philip to a 
promise of submission in return for a full inquiry into his case. 
The promise so grudgingly given remained but a promise, and 
it was not until 1213, nearly twenty years since he had so cruelly 
repudiated Ingeborg, that, driven by continual papal pressure 
and the critical state of his fortunes, Philip openly acknowledged 
the Danish princess as his wife and queen. 

We have seen something of Philip's dealings with his greater 
tenants-in-chief; but such achievements as the conquest of 
Normandy and Anjou and the victory of Bouvines were but the 
fruits of years of diplomacy, during which the royal power had 
permeated the land, like ether the atmosphere, almost unnoticed. 
In lending a sympathetic ear to the complaints of Richard and 
his brothers against their father, Philip was merely carrying out 
the policy we have noticed in his treatment of the Church. 

' He never began a new campaign without forming alliances 
that might support him at each step ', says Philip's modern 
biographer ; and these allies were often the sub-tenants of large 
feudal estates to whom in the days of peace he had given 
his support against the claims of their feudal overlords. Some- 
times he had merely used his influence as a mediator, at others 
he had granted privileges to the tenants, or else he had called 
the case in dispute before his own royal court for judgement. 
By one means or another, at any rate, he had made the lesser 
tenants feel that he was their friend, so that when he went out to 



172 The Making of France 

battle they would flock eagerly to his banner, sometimes in 
defiance of their overlord. 

One danger to the crown lay, not in the actual feudal baronage, 
but in the prevdts, officials appointed by the king with power to 
exact taxes, adminster the laws, and judge offenders in his name 
in the provinces. When the monarchy was weak these prevdts, 
from lack of control, developed into petty tyrants, and it was 
fortunate for Philip that their encroachments were resented 
by both nobles and clergy, so that a system of reform that 
reduced them again to a subordinate position was everywhere 
welcomed. 

Gradually a link was established between local administration 
and the king's council, namely, officials called in the north of 
France baillis, in the south senechals, whose duty was to keep 
a watch over the prevot and to depose or report him if neces- 
sary. The prevot was still to collect the royal revenues as of 
old, but the bailli would take care that he did not cheat the king, 
and would forward the money that he received to the central 
government : he would also hold assizes and from time to time 
visit Paris, where he would give an account of local conditions 
and how he had dealt with them. 

In these reforms, as in those of Henry II of England, a pro- 
cess that was gradually changing the face of Europe can be seen 
at work, first the crumbling of feudal machinery too clumsy to keep 
pace with the needs and demands of dawning civilization, and 
next its replacement by an official class, educated in the 
intricacies of finance, justice, and administration, and dependent 
not on the baronage but on the monarchy for its inspiration and 
success. 

The chief nobles of France in early mediaeval times had 
regarded such titles as 'Mayor of the Palace', 'Seneschal', 
' Chamberlain ', ' Butler ', &c, as bestowing both hereditary 
glory and also political power. With the passing of years some 
of the titles vanished, while under Philip Augustus and his 
grandson Louis IX those that remained passed to 'new' men 
of humbler rank, who bore them merely while they retained 
the office, or else, shorn of any political power, continued as 



French Communes 173 

honours of the court and ballroom. In effect the royal house- 
hold, once a kind of general servant ' doing a bit of everything 
inadequately ' as in the days of Charlemagne, had now developed 
into two distinct bodies, each with their separate sphere of work : 
the great nobles surrounding their sovereign with the dignity 
and ceremonial in which the Middle Ages rejoiced, the trained 
officials advising him and carrying out his will. 

In his attitude to the large towns, except on his own crown 
lands where like other landowners he hesitated to encourage 
independence, Philip II showed himself sympathetic to the 
attempts of citizens to throw off the yoke of neighbouring barons, 
bishops, and abbots. Many of the towns had formed 'communes', 
that is, corporations something like a modern trade union, but 
these, though destined to play a large part in French history, were 
as yet only in their infancy. They had their origin sometimes 
in a revolutionary outburst against oppression, but often in 
a real effort on the part of leading townsmen to organize the 
civil life on profitable lines by means of ' guilds ', or associations 
of merchants and traders with special privileges and laws. 
Some of the privileges at which these city corporations aimed 
were the right to collect their own taxes, to hold their own 
law-courts for deciding purely local disputes, and to protect 
their trade against fraud, tyranny, and competition from outside. 
It all sounds natural enough to modern ears, but it awoke 
profound indignation in- a French writer of the twelfth 
century. 

'The word "commune", he says, 'is new and detestable, for 
this is what it implies ; that those who owe taxes shall pay the 
rent that is due to their lord but once in the year only, and if 
they commit a crime against him they shall find pardon when 
they have made amends according to a fixed tariff of justice.' 

Except within his own demesnes Phillip II readily granted 
charters confirming the ' communes ' in their coveted rights, 
and he also founded ' new ' towns under royal protection, 
offering there upon certain conditions a refuge to escaped serfs 
able to pay the necessary taxes. 



174 The Making of France 

In Paris itself his reign marks a new era, when, instead 
of a town famed according to a chronicler of the day chiefly for 
its pestiferous smells, there were laid the foundations of one ot 
the most luxurious cities of Europe. The cleansing and paving 
of the filthy streets, the building of fortifications, of markets, and 
of churches, and above all of that glory of Gothic architecture, 
Notre Dame de la Victoire, founded to celebrate the triumph 
of Bouvines : such were some of the works planned or under- 
taken in the capital during this reign. Over the young Uni- 
versity of Paris the King also stretched out a protecting hand, 
defending the students from the hostility of the townsfolk by the 
command that they should be admitted to the privileges enjoyed 
by priests. For this practical sympathy he and his successors 
were well repaid in the growth of an educated public opinion 
ready to exalt its patron the crown by tongue and pen. 

Philip Augustus died in July 1223. Great among the many 
great figures of his day, French chroniclers have yet left no 
distinct impression of his personality. It would almost seem as 
if the will, the foresight, and the patience that have won him 
fame in the eyes of posterity, built up a baffling barrier be- 
tween his character and those who actually saw him. Men 
recognized him as a king to be admired and feared, ' august ' 
in his conquests, terrible in his wrath if any dared cross his will, 
but his reserve, his indifference to court gaiety, his rigid attitude 
of dislike to those who used oaths or blasphemy, they found wholly 
unsympathetic and strange. Of the great work he had done for 
France they were too close to judge fairly, and would have under- 
stood him better had he been rash and heedless of design like the 
Lion-Heart. For a real appreciation of Philip Augustus we must 
turn to his modern biographer. 

'He had found France a small realm hedged in by mighty 
rivals. When he began his reign but a very small portion of 
the French-speaking people owned his sway. As suzerain his 
power was derided. Even as immediate lord he was defied and 
set at nought. But when he died the whole face of France was 
changed. The King of the Franks was undisputedly the king 
of by far the greater part of the land, and the internal strength 



Achievements of Philip II 175 

of his government had advanced as rapidly and as securely as 
the external power.' 

Such was the change in France itself, but we can estimate 
also to-day, what no contemporary of Philip Augustus could 
have realized, the effect of that change on Europe, when France 
from a collection of feudal fiefs stood forth at last a nation in 
the modern sense, ready to take her place as a leader amongst 
her more backward neighbours. 

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 

Louis VII of France .... 1137 47 

Henry II of England 1154-89 

Philip II of France 1180-1223 

John, King of England 1199-1216 

Battle of Bouvines 1214 



XIV 

EMPIRE AND PAPACY 

When the Emperor Henry IV crossed the ice-bound Alps 
on his journey of submission to Canossa he was accompanied 
by a faithful knight, Frederick of Buren, whom he later rewarded 
for his loyalty with the hand of his daughter and the title Duke 
of Suabia. Frederick's son was elected Emperor as Conrad III, 1 
the first of the imperial line of Hohenstaufen that was destined 
to carry on through several generations the war between Empire 
and Papacy. 

The Hohenstaufen received their name from a hill on which 
stood one of Frederick of Buren's strongest castles, but they 
were also called ' Waiblingen ' after a town in their possession ; 
while the House of Bavaria, their chief rivals, was called ' Welf ' 
after an early ancestor. The feud of the Waiblingen and the 
Welfs that convulsed Germany had no less devastating an effect 
upon Italy, always exposed to influence from beyond the Alps, 
and the names of the rivals, corrupted on Italian tongues into 
■ Ghibellines ' and ' Guelfs ', became party cries throughout the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 

In our last chapter we spoke of French 'communes', muni- 
cipalities that rebelled against their overlords, setting up a 
government of their own : the same process of emancipation was 
at work in North Italy only that it was able to act with greater 
rapidity and success for a time on account of the national tendency 
towards separation and the vigour of town life. 

' In France ', says a thirteenth-century Italian, in surprise, 
' only the townspeople dwell in towns : the knights and noble 
ladies stay ... on their own demesnes.' Certainly the contrast 
with his native Lombardy was strong. There each city lived 
like a fortified kingdom on its hill-top, or in the midst of wide 

1 See p. 152. 



The Italian Communes 177 

plains, cut off from its neighbours by suspicion, by jealousy, by 
competition. In the narrgw streets noble and knight jostled 
shoulders perforce with merchants, students, mountebanks, and 
beggars. The limits of space dictated that many things in life 
must be shared in common, whether religious processions or 
plagues, and if street fighting flourished in consequence so also 
did class intimacy and a sharpening of wits as well as of swords. 
Thus the towns of North Italy, like flowers in a hot-house, bore 
fruits of civilization in advance of the world outside, whether in 
commerce, painting, or the art of self-government ; and visitors 
from beyond the Alps stared astonished at merchants' luxurious 
palaces that made the castles of their own princes seem mere 
barbarian strongholds. 

Yet this profitable independence was not won without struggles 
so fierce and continuous that they finally endangered the political 
freedom in whose interests they had originally been waged. At 
first the struggle was with barbarian invaders ; and here, as in 
the case of Rome and the Popes, it was often the local bishops 
who, when emperors at Constantinople ceased to govern except 
in name, fostered the young life of the city states and educated 
their citizens in a rough knowledge of war and statecraft. 

With the dawn of feudalism bishops degenerated into tyrants, 
and municipalities began to elect consuls and advisory councils 
and under their leadership to rebel against their former bene- 
factors, and to establish governments independent of their 
control. 

The next danger was from within : cities are swayed more 
easily than nations, and too often the ' communes ' of Lombardy 
became the prey of private factions or of more powerful city 
neighbours. Class warred against class and city against city ; 
and out of their struggles arose leagues and counter-leagues, 
bewildering to follow like the ever-changing colours of a kaleido- 
scope. 

Into this atmosphere of turmoil the quarrel between Popes and 
Holy Roman Emperors, begun by Henry IV and Hildebrand 
and carried on by the Hohenstaufen and the inheritors of 
Hildebrand's ideals, entered from the ' communes ' point of view 



178 Empire and Papacy 

like a heaven-sent opportunity for establishing their independence. 
In the words of a tenth-century bishop : ' The Italians always 
wish to have two masters that they may keep one in check by the 
other.' 

The cities that followed the Hohenstaufen were labelled 
' Ghibelline ', those that upheld the Pope ' Guelf ' ; and at first, 
and indeed throughout the contest where cruelty and treachery 
were concerned, there was little to choose between the rivals. 
Later, however, the fierce imperialism of Frederick I was to give 
to the warfare of his opponents, the Guelfs, a patriotic aspect. 

Frederick I, the ' Barbarossa ' of the Third Crusade, was 
a Hohenstaufen on his father's side, a Welf on his mother's ; 
and it had been the hope of those who elected him Emperor 
that ' like a corner-stone he would bind the two together . . . that 
thus with God's blessing he might end their ancient quarrel '; 
At first it appeared this hope might be realized, for the new 
Emperor made a friend of his cousin Henry the Lion who, as 
Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, was heir of the Welf ambitions. 
Frederick also, by his firm and business-like rule, established 
what the chroniclers called such ' unwonted peace ' that ' men 
seemed changed, the world a different one, the very Heaven 
milder and softer '. 

Unfortunately Frederick, who has been aptly described as an 
' imperialist Hildebrand ', regarded the peace of Germany merely 
as a stepping-stone to wider ambitions. Justinian, who had ruled 
Europe from Constantinople, was his model, and with the help 
of lawyers from the University of Bologna, whom he handsomely 
rewarded for their services, he revived all the old imperial claims 
over North Italy that men had forgotten or allowed to slip into 
disuse. The ' communes ' found that rights and privileges for 
which their ancestors had fought and died were trampled under 
foot by an imperial official, the podestd, sent as supreme governor 
to each of the more important towns : taxes were imposed and 
exacted to the uttermost coin by his iron hand : complaint or 
rebellion were punished by torture and death. 

' Death for freedom is the next best thing to freedom,' cried 
the men of Crema, flaming into wild revolt, while Milan shut her 



Battle of Legnano 179 

gates against her podestd in an obstinate three years' siege. 
Deliverance was not yet, and Frederick and his vast army 
of Germans desolated the plains : Crema was burned, her 
starving population turned adrift : the glory of Milan was reduced 
to a stone quarry : Pope Alexander III who, feeling his own 
independence threatened by imperial demands, had supported the 
movement for liberty, was driven from Rome and forced to seek 
refuge in France. Everywhere the Ghibellines triumphed, and 
it was in these black days in Italy that the Guelfs ceased for 
a time to be a faction and became patriots, while the Pope stood 
before the world the would-be saviour of his land from a foreign 
yoke. 

Amid the smouldering ruins of Milan the Lombard League 
sprang into life : town after town, weary of German oppression 
and insolence, offered their allegiance : even Venice, usually 
selfish in the safe isolation of her lagoons, proffered ships and 
money. Milan was rebuilt, and a new city, called after the 
patriot Pope ' Alessandria ', was founded on a strategic site. 
Alessandria degla paglia, ' Alessandria of the straw ', Barbarossa 
nicknamed it contemptuously, threatening to burn it like a heap 
of weeds ; but the new walls withstood his best engines, and 
plague and the damp cold of winter devastated his armies 
encamped around them. 

The political horizon was not, indeed, so fair for the Emperor 
as in the early days of his reign. Germany seethed with plots 
in her master's absence, and Frederick had good reason to 
suspect that Henry the Lion was their chief author, the more 
that he had sulkily refused to share in this last Italian campaign. 
Worst of all was the news that Alexander III, having negotiated 
alliances with the Kings of France and England, had returned 
to Italy and was busy stirring up any possible seeds of revolt 
against Frederick, whom he had excommunicated. 

In the year 1176, at Legnano, fifteen miles from Milan, the 
armies of the League and Empire met in decisive battle, 
Barbarossa nothing doubting of his success against mere armed 
citizens ; but the spirit of the men of Crema survived in the 
' Company of Death ', a bodyguard of Milanese knights sworn 

N 2 



180 Empire and Papacy 

to protect their carroccio, or sacred cart, or else to fall beside 
it. Upon the carroccio was raised a figure of Christ with arms 
outstretched, beneath his feet an altar, while from a lofty pole 
hung the banner of St. Ambrose, patron saint of Milan. 

When the battle opened the first terrific onslaught of German 
cavalry broke the Milanese lines ; but the Company of Death, 
reckless in their resolve, rallied the waverers and turned defence 
into attack. In the ensuing struggle the Emperor was unhorsed, 
and, as the rumour spread through the ranks that he had been 
killed, the Germans broke, and their retreat became a wild, 
unreasoning rout that bore their commander back on its tide, 
unable to stem the current, scarcely able to save himself. 

Such was the battle of Legnano, worthy to be remembered 
not as an isolated twelfth-century victory of one set of forces 
against another, but as one of the first very definite advances in 
the great campaign for liberty that is still the battle of the world. 
At Venice in the following year the Hohenstaufen acknowledged 
his defeat and was reconciled to the Church ; while by the 
' Perpetual Peace of Constance ' signed in 1183 he granted to the 
communes of North Italy 'all the royal rights (regalia) which 
they had ever had or at the moment enjoyed '. 

Such rights — coinage, the election of officials and judges, the 
power to raise and control armies, to impose and exact taxes — 
are the pillars on which democracy must support her house 
of freedom. Yet since 'freedom' to the mediaeval mind too 
often implied the right to oppress some "one else or maintain 
a state of anarchy, too much stress must not be laid on the 
immediate gains. North Italy in the coming centuries was to 
fall again under foreign rule, her ' communes ' to abuse and 
betray the rights for which the Company of Death had risked 
their lives : yet, in spite of this taint of ignorance and treachery, 
the victory of Legnano had won for Europe something infinitely 
precious, the knowledge that tyrants could be overthrown by the 
popular will and feudal armies discomfited by citizen levies. 

Barbarossa returned to Germany to vent his rage on Henry 
the Lion, to whose refusal to accompany him to Italy he con- 
sidered his defeat largely due. Strong in the support of the 



Henry c the Lion ' 1 8 1 

Church, to which he was now reconciled, he summoned his cousin 
to appear before an imperial Diet and make answer to the charge 
of having confiscated ecclesiastical lands and revenues for his 
own use. Henry merely replied to this mandate by setting fire 
to Church property in Saxony, and in his absence the ban of 
outlawry was passed against him by the Diet. Here again was 
the old ' Waiblingen ' and ' Welf ' feud bursting into flame, like 
a fire that has been but half-suppressed, and cousinship went to 
the wall. Henry the Welf was a son-in-law of Henry 1 1 of England 
and had made allies of Philip Augustus and the King of Denmark : 
his Duchy of Bavaria in the south and of Saxony in the north 
covered a third of German territory : he had been winning 
military laurels in a struggle against the Slavs, while Frederick 
had been losing Lombardy. Thus he pitted himself against the 
Emperor, unmindful that even in Germany the hands of the 
political clock were moving forward and feudalism slowly giving 
up its dominion. 

To the dawning sense of German nationality Barbarossa was 
something more than first among his barons, he was a king 
supported by the Church, and Bavarians and Saxons came 
reluctantly to the rebel banner; while, as the campaign developed, 
the other princes saw their fellow vassal beaten and despoiled 
of his lands and driven into exile without raising a finger to 
help him. 

Frederick allowed Henry the Lion to keep his Brunswick 
estates, but Saxony and Bavaria he divided up amongst minor 
vassals, in order to avoid the risk of another powerful rival. 
Master of Germany not merely in name but in power, he and 
his^ successors could have built up a strong monarchy, as Philip 
II and the House of Capet were to do in France, had not the 
siren voice of Italy called them to wreck on her shifting policies. 

Hitherto we have spoken chiefly of North Italy; but Frederick I 
bound Germany to her southern neighbours by fresh ties when 
he married his eldest son Henry in 1187 to Constance, heiress 
of the Norman kingdom of Naples and Sicily. By this alliance 
he hoped to establish a permanent Hohenstaufen counterpoise 
in the south to the alliance of the Pope and the Guelf towns in 



1 82 Empire and Papacy 

the north. Triumphant over the wrathful but helpless Roman 
See, he felt himself an emperor indeed, and having crowned his 
son Henry as ' Caesar ', in imitation of classic times, he rode away 
to the Third Crusade, still lusting after adventure and glory. 

The news of his death in Asia Minor 1 swept Germany with 
sadness and pride. Like all his house, he had been cruel and 
hard ; but vices like these seemed to weigh little to the mediaeval 
mind against the peace and prosperity enjoyed under his rule. 
Legends grew about his name, and the peasants whispered that 
he had not died but slept beneath the sandstone rocks, and would 
awake again when his people were in danger to be their leader 
and protector. 

Henry VI, who succeeded Frederick in the Empire, succeeded 
also to his dreams and the pitfalls that they inspired. One of 
his earliest struggles had been the finally successful attempt to 
secure Sicily against the claims of Count Tancred, an illegitimate 
grandson of the last ruler. Great were the sufferings of the 
unhappy Sicilians who had adopted the Norman's cause ; for 
Henry, having bribed or coerced the Pope and North Italy into 
a temporary alliance, exacted a bitter vengeance. Tancred's 
youthful son, blinded and mutilated, was sent with his mother to 
an Alpine prison to end his days, while in the dungeons of 
Palermo and Apulia torture and starvation brought to his 
followers death as a blessed relief from pain. 

Queen Constance, who had been powerless to check these 
atrocities, turned against her husband in loathing : the Pope 
excommunicated their author ; but Henry VI laughed contemp- 
tuously at both. It was his threefold ambition : first, to make the 
imperial crown not elective but hereditary in the House of 
Hohenstaufen ; next, to tempt the German princes into accept- 
ing this proposition by the incorporation of Naples and Sicily as 
a province of the Empire ; and thirdly, to rule all his dominions 
from his southern kingdom, with the Pope at Rome, as in the days 
of Otto the Great, the chief bishop in his empire. 

Strong-willed, persistent, resourceful, with the imagination 
that sees visions, and the practical brain of a man of business who 

1 See p. 154. 



Pope Innocent III 183 

can realize them, Henry VI, had he lived longer, might have 
gained at least a temporary recognition of his schemes ; but in 
1 197 he died at the age of thirty-two, leaving a son not yet three 
years old as the heir of Hohenstaufen ambitions. Twelvemonths 
later died also Queen Constance, having reversed as much as 
she could during her short widowhood of her hated husband's 
German policy, and having bequeathed the little King of 
Naples to the guardianship of the greatest of mediaeval Popes 
and the champion of the Guelfs, Innocent III. 

At the coronation of Innocent III the officiating priest had 
used these words : ' Take the tiara and know that thou art the 
father of princes and kings, the ruler of the world, the Vicar on 
earth of our Saviour Jesus Christ.' To Lothario di Conti this 
utterance was but the confirmation of his own beliefs, as unshak- 
able as those of Hildebrand, as wide in their scope as the 
imperialism of Frederick Barbarossa or Henry VI. 'The Lord 
Jesus Christ,' he declared, ' has set up one ruler over all things 
as His Universal Vicar, and as all things in Heaven, Earth, and 
Hell bow the knee to Christ, so should all obey Christ's Vicar 
that there be one flock and one shepherd.' Again : ' Princes 
have power on earth, priests have also power in Heaven.' 

In illustration of these views he likened the Papacy to the sun, 
the Empire to the lesser light of the moon, and recalled how 
Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane gave to St. Peter two swords. 
By these, he explained, were meant temporal and spiritual power, 
and emperors who claimed to exercise the former could only do 
so by the gracious consent of St. Peter's successors, since 'the 
Lord gave Peter the rule not only of the universal Church but 
also the rule of the whole world '. 

Gregory VII had made men wonder in the triumph of Canossa 
whether such an ideal of the Papacy could ever be realized ; but 
as if in proof he had been hunted from Rome and died in exile. 
It was left to Innocent III to exhibit the partial fulfilment, at any 
rate, of all that his predecessor had dreamed. In character no 
saintly Bernard of Clairvaux, but a clear-brained practical states- 
man, he set before himself the vision of a kingdom of God on 
earth after the pattern of earthly kingdoms; and to this end, that 



184 Empire and Papacy 

he sincerely believed carried with it the blessing of God for the 
perfecting of mankind, he used every weapon in his armoury. 

Sometimes his ambitions failed, as when, in a real glow of 
enthusiasm, he preached the Fourth Crusade — an expedition that 
ended in Venice, who had promised the necessary ships, divert- 
ing the crusaders to storm her a coveted port on the Dalmatian 
coast, and afterwards to sack and burn Constantinople in the 
mingled interests of commerce and pillage. His anger at the 
news that the remonstrances of his legates had been ignored 
could hardly at first be extinguished. Not thus had been his 
plan of winning Eastern Christendom to the Catholic Faith and 
of destroying the infidel ; for the Latin Empire of Constantinople, 
set up by the victorious crusaders, was obviously too weak to 
maintain for long its tyranny over hostile Greeks, or to serve as 
an effective barrier against the Turks. Statesmanship, how- 
ever, prompted him to reap what immediate harvest he could 
from the blunders of his faithless sons; and he accepted the 
submission of the Church in Constantinople as a debt long owing 
to the Holy See. 

The Fourth Crusade, in spite of the extension of Rome's 
ecclesiastical influence, must be reckoned as one of Innocent's 
failures. In the West, on the other hand, the atmosphere 
created by his personality and statecraft made the name of ' The 
Lord Innocent ' one of weight and fear to his enemies, of rejoicing 
to his friends. When upholding Queen Ingeborg he had stood as 
a moral force, bending Philip Augustus to his will by his convinced 
determination ; and this same tenacity of belief and purpose, 
added to the purity of his personal life and the charm of his 
manner, won him the affection of the Roman populace, usually so 
hostile to its Vicars. 

Mediaeval popes were, as a rule, respected less in Italy than 
beyond the Alps, and least of all in their own capital, where too 
many spiritual gifts had been seen debased for material ends, and 
papal acts were often at variance with pious professions. During 
the pontificate of Innocent III, however, we find the ' Prefect ', 
the imperial representative at Rome, accept investiture at his 
hands, the ' Senator ', chief magistrate of the municipality, do 



Pope Innocent III 185 

him homage ; and through this double influence his control 
became paramount over the city government. 

In Naples and Sicily he was able to continue the policy of 
Constance, drive out rebellious German barons, struggle against 
the Saracens in Sicily, and develop the education of his ward, 
the young King of Naples, as the spiritual son who should one 
day do battle for his ideals. ' God has not spared the rod/ he 
wrote to Frederick II. 'He has. taken away your father and 
mother: yet he has given you a worthier father, His Vicar; and 
a bettep- mother, the Church.' 

In Lombardy, where the Guelfs naturally turned to him as 
their champion, the papal way was comparatively smooth, for 
the cruelty of Barbarossa and his son Henry VI had aroused 
hatred and suspicion on all sides. Thus Innocent found him- 
self more nearly the master of Italy than any Pope before his 
time, and from Italy his patronage and alliances extended like 
a web all over Europe. 

Philip Augustus of France, trying to ignore and defy him, 
found in the end the anger he aroused worth placating : John of 
England changed his petulant defiance into submission and an 
oath of homage : Portugal accepted him as her suzerain : rival 
kings of Hungary sought his arbitration : even distant Armenia 
sent ambassadors to ask his protection. His most impressive 
triumph, however, was secured in his dealings with the Empire. 

Henry VI had wished, we have seen, to make the imperial 
crown .hereditary ; but no German prince would have been 
willing to accept the child he left as heir to his troubled fortunes. 
The choice of the electors therefore wavered between another 
Hohenstaufen, Philip of Suabia, brother of the late Emperor, and 
the Welf Otto, son of Henry the Lion. The votes were divided, 
and each claimant afterwards declared himself the legally elected 
emperor, one with the title Philip II, the other with that of 
Otto IV. 

For ten long years Germany was devastated by their civil 
wars. Otto, as the Guelf representative, gained the support of 
Innocent the Great, to whom the claimants at one time appealed 
for arbitration; but Philip refused to submit to this judgement 



1 86 , Empire and Papacy 

in favour of his rival, believing that he himself had behind him 
the majority of the German princes and of the official class. 

' Inasmuch/ declared Innocent, 'as our dearest son in Christ, 
Otto, is industrious, prudent, discreet, strong and constant, him- 
self devoted to the Church ... we by the authority of St. Peter 
receive him as King and will in due course bestow on him the 
imperial crown.' 

Here was papal triumph ! Rome no longer patronized but 
patron, with Otto on his knees, gratefully promising submission 
and homage with every kind of ecclesiastical privilege, to 
complete the picture. Yet circumstances change traditions as 
well as people, and when the death of Philip of Suabia left him 
master of Germany, the Guelf Otto found his old ideals im- 
practicable : he became a Ghibelline in policy, announced his 
imperial rights over Lombardy, even over some of the towns 
belonging to the Pope, while he loudly announced his intention 
of driving the young Hohenstaufen from Naples. 

Innocent's wrath at this volte-face was unbounded. Otto, no 
longer his ' dearest son in Christ ', was now a perjurer and 
schismatic, whose excommunication and deposition were the 
immediate duty of Rome. Neither, however, was likely to be 
effective unless the Pope could provide Italy and Germany with 
a rival, whose dazzling claims, backed by papal support, would 
win him followers wherever he went. In this crisis Innocent 
found his champion in the Hohenstaufen prince denounced by 
Otto, a lad educated almost since infancy in the tenets and 
ambitions of the Catholic Church. 

Frederick, King of Naples and Sicily, was an interesting 
development of hereditary tastes and the atmosphere in which 
he had been reared. To the southern blood that leaped in his 
veins he owed perhaps his hot passions, his sensuous apprecia- 
tion of luxury and art, his almost Saracen contempt for women 
save as toys to amuse his leisure hours. From the Hohen- 
staufen he imbibed strength, ambition, and cruelty, from the 
Norman strain on his mother's side his reckless daring and 
treachery. With the ordinary education of a prince of his day, 
Frederick's qualities and vices might have merely produced 



Frederick II 187 

a warrior king of rather exceptional ability ; but thanks to the 
papal tutors provided by Innocent, the boy's naturally quick brain 
and imagination were stirred by a course of studies far superior 
to what his lay contemporaries usually enjoyed, and he emerged 
in manhood with a real love of books and culture, and with an 
eager curiosity on such subjects as philosophy and natural 
history. 

In the royal charter by which he founded the University of 
Naples Frederick expressed his intention that here 'those 
within the Kingdom who had hunger for knowledge might find 
the food for which they were yearning ' ; and his court at 
Palermo, if from one aspect dissolute and luxurious, was also 
a centre for men of wit and knowledge against whose brains the 
King loved to test his own quips and theories. 

When Frederick reached Rome, on Innocent's hasty summons 
to unsheath the sword of the Hohenstaufen against Otto, much 
of his character was as yet a closed book even to himself. 
Impulsive and eager, like any ambitious youth of seventeen 
called to high adventure, and with a genuine respect for his 
guardian, he did not look far ahead ; but kneeling at the Pope's 
feet, pledged his homage and faith before he rode away north- 
wards to win an empire. In Germany a considerable following 
awaited him, lifelong opponents of Otto on account of his Welf 
blood, and others who hated him for . his churlish manners. 
Amongst them Frederick scattered lavishly some money he had 
borrowed from the Republic of Genoa, and this generosity, 
combined with his Hohenstaufen strength and daring, increased 
the happy reputation that papal legates had already established 
for him in many quarters. 

In December 1212 he was crowned in Mainz. Civil war 
followed, embittered by papal and imperial leagues, but in 
1214 Otto IV was decisively beaten at Bouvines in the struggle 
with Philip II of France that we have already described, 1 and 
the tide which had been previously turning against him now 
swept away his few friends and last hopes. With the entry of 
his young rival into the Rhineland provinces the dual Empire 

1 See p. 169. 



1 88 Empire and Papacy 

ceased to exist, and Frederick was crowned in Aachen, the old 
capital of Charlemagne. 

Innocent III had now reached the summit of his power, for 
his pupil and protege sat on the throne of Rome's imperial 
rival. In the same year he called a Council to the Lateran 
Palace, the fourth gathering of its kind, to consider the two 
objects dearest to his heart, 'the deliverance of the Holy Land 
and the reform of the Church Universal '. Crusading zeal, 
however, he could not rouse again : to cleanse and spiritualize 
the life of the Church in the thirteenth century was to prove 
a task beyond men of finer fibre than Innocent : but, as an 
illustration of his immense influence over Europe, the Fourth 
Lateran Council with its dense submissive crowds, representative 
of every land and class, was a fitting end to his pontificate. 

In the year 1216 Innocent III died — the most powerful of all 
Popes, a striking personality whose life by kindly fate did not 
outlast his glory. In estimating Innocent's ability as a statesman 
there stands one blot against his record in the clear light shed 
by after-events, namely, the short-sighted policy that once again 
united the Kingdom of Naples to the Empire, and laid the 
Papacy between the upper millstone of Lombardy and the 
nether millstone of southern Italy. Excuse may be found in 
Innocent's desperate need of a champion with Otto IV threaten- 
ing his papal heritage, added to his belief in the promises of 
the young Hohenstaufen to remain his faithful vassal. He also 
tried to safeguard the future by making Frederick publicly 
declare that he would bequeath Naples to a son who would not 
stand for election to the Empire ; but in trusting the word of 
the young Emperor he had sown a wind from which his successors 
were to reap a whirlwind. 

The new Emperor was just twenty years old when Innocent 
died. Either to please his guardian, or moved by a momentary 
religious impulse, he had taken the Cross immediately after his 
entry into Aachen ; but the years passed and he showed him- 
self in no haste to fulfil the vow. Much of his time was spent 
in his loved southern kingdom, where he completed Innocent's 
work of reducing to submission the Saracen population that 



Frederick II 189 

had remained in Sicily since the Mahometan conquest. 1 As 
infidels the Papacy had regarded these Arabs with special hatred ; 
but Frederick, once assured that they were so weak that they 
would be in future dependent on his favour, began protecting in- 
stead of persecuting them. He also encouraged their silk industry 
by building them a town, Lucera, on the Neapolitan coast, where 
they could pursue it undisturbed ; while he enrolled large 
numbers of Arab warriors in his army, and used them to enforce 
his will on the feudal aristocracy, descendants of the Norman 
adventurers of the eleventh century. 

So successful was he in playing off one section of his subjects 
against another, opposing or aiding the different classes as 
policy dictated, that he soon reigned as an autocrat in Naples. 
Many of the nobles' strongholds were levelled with the dust : 
their claim to wage private war was forbidden on pain of death : 
cases were taken away from their law-courts and those of the 
feudal bishops to be decided by royal justices : towns were 
deprived of their freedom to elect their own magistrates, while 
crown officials sent from Palermo administered the laws, and 
imposed and collected taxes. 

On the whole these changes were beneficial, for private privi- 
leges had been greatly abused in Naples, and Frederick, like 
Philip Augustus or the Angevin Henry II, had the instinct and 
ability to govern well when he chose. Nevertheless the sub- 
jugation of 'the Kingdom ', as Naples was usually called in Italy, 
was of course received with loud outcries of anger by Neapolitan 
barons and churchmen, who hastened to inform the Holy See 
that their ruler loved infidels better than Christians and kept an 
eastern harem at Palermo. 

Honorius III, the new Pope, accepted such reports and 
scandals with dismay. He had himself noted uneasily 
Frederick's absorption in Italian affairs and frequently reminded, 
him of his crusading vow. Being gentle and slow to commit him- 
self to any decided step however, it was not till the Hohenstaufen 
deliberately broke his promise to Innocent III, and had his eldest 
son Henry crowned King of the Romans as well as King of 

1 See p. 115. 



190 Empire and Papacy 

Naples, thus acknowledging him as his heir in both Germany and 
Italy, that Honorius's wrath flamed into a threat of excommunica- 
tion. For a time it spread no farther, since Frederick was lavish 
in explanations and in promises of friendship that he had no inten- 
tion of fulfilling, while the old Pope chose to believe him rather 
than risk an actual conflagration. At last, however, the patient 
Honorius died. 

Gregory IX, the new Pope, was of the family of Innocent, and 
shared to the full his views of the world-wide supremacy of the 
Church. An old man of austere life and feverish energy, he re- 
garded Frederick as a monster of ingratitude and became almost 
hysterical and quite unreasonable in his efforts to humble him. 
Goaded by his constant reproaches and threats, the Emperor 
began to make leisurely preparations at Brindisi for his crusade ; 
but when he at last started, an epidemic of fever, to which he 
himself fell a victim, forced him to put back to port. Gregory, 
refusing to believe in this illness as anything more than an ex- 
cuse for delay, at once excommunicated him ; and then, though 
Frederick set sail as soon as he was well enough, repeated the 
ban, giving as his reason that the Emperor had not waited to 
receive his pardon for the first offence like an obedient son of 
the Church. 

A crusader excommunicated by the Head of Christendom first 
for not fulfilling his vow and then for fulfilling it ! This was a 
degrading and ridiculous sight ; and Frederick, now definitely 
hostile to Rome, continued on his way, determined with 
obstinate pride that, if not for the Catholic Faith, then for his 
own glory, he would carry out his purpose. The Templars re- 
fused him support : the Christians still left in the neighbourhood 
of Acre helped him half-heartedly or stood aloof, frightened by 
the warnings of their priests ; but Frederick achieved more 
without the Pope's aid than other crusaders had done of late 
years with his blessing. By force of arms, and still more by 
skilful negotiations, he obtained from the Sultan possession of 
Jerusalem, and entering in triumph placed on his head the crown 
of the Latin kings. 

His vow fulfilled, he sailed for Sicily, and the Pope, whose 



Frederick II 191 

troops in Frederick's absence had been harrying ' the Kingdom ', 
hastily patched up a peace at San Germane ' I will remember 
the past no more/ cried Frederick, but anger burned within him 
at papal hostility. 'The Emperor has come to me with the 
zeal of a devoted son,' said Gregory, but there was no trust in 
his heart that corresponded to his words. 

A Hohenstaufen, who had taken Jerusalem unaided, supreme 
in Naples, supreme also in Germany, stretching out his imperial 
sceptre over Lombardy ! What Pope, who believed that the 
future of the Church rested on the temporal independence of 
Rome, could sleep tranquilly in his bed with such a vision ? 

It is not possible to describe here in any detail the renewed 
war between Empire and Papacy that followed the inevitable 
breakdown of the treaty of San Germano. Very bitter was the 
spirit in which it was waged on both sides. Frederick, whatever 
his intentions, could not forget that it was the Father of 
Christendom who had tried to ruin his crusade. The re- 
membrance did not so much shake his faith as wake in him an 
exasperated sense of injustice that rendered him deaf to those 
who counselled compromise. Unable to rid himself wholly of 
the fear of papal censure, he yet saw clearly enough that the sin 
for which Popes relentlessly pursued him was not his cruelty, 
nor profligacy, nor even his toleration of Saracens, but the 
fact that he was King of Naples as well as Holy Roman 
Emperor. 

To a man of Frederick's haughty temperament there was but 
one absolution he could win for this crime, so to master Rome 
that he could squeeze her judgements to his fancy like a sponge 
between his strong fingers. ' Italy is my heritage,' he wrote to 
the Pope, ' and all the world knows it.' 

In his passionate determination to obtain this heritage states- 
manship was thrown to the winds. He had planned a strong 
monarchy in Naples, but in Germany he undermined the founda- 
tions of royal authority that Barbarossa and Henry VI had 
begun to lay. ' Let every Prince ', he declared, ' enjoy in peace, 
according to the improved custom of his land, his immunities, 
jurisdictions, counties and hundreds, both those which belong to 



192 Empire and Papacy 

him in full right, and those which have been granted out to him 
in fief.' 

The Italian Hohenstaufen only sought from his northern 
kingdom, whose good government he thus carelessly sacrificed 
to feudal anarchy, sufficient money to pay for his campaigns 
beyond the Alps and leisure to pursue them. In the words of a 
modern historian, 'he bartered his German kingship for an 
immediate triumph over his hated foe.' 

At first victory rewarded his energy and skill. His hereditary 
enemy, the ' Lombard League ', had tampered with the loyalty 
of his eldest son, Henry, King of the Romans, whom he had left 
to rule in Germany : but Frederick discovered the plot in time 
and deposed and imprisoned the culprit. In despair at the 
prospect of lifelong imprisonment held out to him, the young 
Henry flung himself to his death down a steep mountain-side ; 
and Conrad, his younger brother, a boy of eight, was crowned in 
his stead. 

In North Italy Frederick pursued the policy not so much of 
trampling down resistance with his German levies, like his 
grandfather Barbarossa, as of employing Italian nobles of the 
Ghibelline party, whom he supported and financed that they 
might fight his battles and make his wrath terrible in the popular 
hearing. Such were Eccelin de Romano and his brother 
Alberigo, lords of Verona and Vicenza, whose tyranny and 
cruelties seemed abnormal even in their day. 

'The Devil's own Servant' Eccelin is called by a contem- 
porary, who describes how he slaughtered in cold blood eleven 
thousand prisoners. 

' I believe, in truth, no such wicked man has been from the 
beginning of the world unto our own days : for all men trembled 
at him as a rush quivers in the water ... he who lived to-day 
was not sure of the morrow, the father would seek out and slay 
his son, and the son his father or any of his kinsfolk to please 
this man.' 

Alberigo ' hanged twenty-five of the greatest men of Treviso 
who had in no wise offended or harmed him ' ; and as the 
prisoners struggled in their death agonies he thrust among their 



Frederick II 193 

feet their wives, daughters, and sisters, whom he afterwards 
turned adrift half-naked to seek protection where they might. 

Revenge when this ■ Limb of Satan ' fell into the hands of his 
enemies was of a brutality to match ; for Alberigo and his young 
sons were torn in pieces by an infuriated mob, his wife and 
daughters burned alive, ' though they were noble maidens and 
the fairest in the world and guiltless.' 

Passions ran too deep between Guelf and Ghibelline to 
distinguish innocency, or to spare youth or sex. Cruelty, the 
most despicable and infectious of vices, was the very atmosphere 
of the thirteenth century, desecrating what has been described 
from another aspect as ' an age of high ideals and heroic lives '. 

It is remarked with some surprise by contemporaries that 
Frederick II could pardon a joke at his own expense; but on 
the other hand we read of his cutting off the thumb of a notary 
who had misspelt his name, and callously ordering one of his 
servants, by way of amusement, to dive and dive again into the 
sea after a golden cup, until from sheer exhaustion he reappeared 
no more. 

At Cortenuova the Lombard League was decisively beaten 
by the imperial forces, the carroccio of Milan seized and 
burned. Frederick, flushed with success, now declared that not 
only North but also Middle Italy was subject to his allegiance, 
and replied to a new excommunication* by advancing into 
Romagna and besieging some of the papal towns. Gregory, 
worn out by grief and fury, died as his enemy approached the 
gates of Rome : and his immediate successor, unnerved by 
excitement, followed him to the grave before the cardinals who 
had elected him could proceed to his consecration. 

Innocent IV, who now ascended the papal throne, had of old 
shown some sympathy to the imperial cause; but Frederick, 
when he heard of his election, is reported to have said, ' I have 
lost a friend, for no Pope can be a Ghibelline.' With the example 
of, Otto IV in his mind he should have added that no Emperor 
could remain a Guelf. 

Frederick had indeed gained an inveterate enemy, more 
dangerous than Gregory IX, because more politic and discreet. 



194 Empire and Papacy 

From Lyons, whither he had fled, Innocent IV maintained 
unflinchingly the claims he could no longer set forth in Rome, 
declaring the victorious Emperor excommunicate and deposed. 
'Has the Pope deposed me?' asked Frederick scornfully, when 
the news came. ' Bring me my crowns that I may see what he 
has taken away ! ' 

One after another he placed on his head the seven crowns his 
attendants brought him, the royal crown of Germany and imperial 
diadem of Rome, the iron circlet of Lombardy, the crowns of 
Jerusalem, of Burgundy, of Sardinia, and of Sicily and Naples. 
'See! 5 he said, 'Are they not all mine still? and none shall 
take them from me without a struggle.' 

So the hideous war between Welf and Waiblingen, between 
Guelf and Ghibelline continued, and Germany and Italy were 
deluged with blood and flames. 'After the Emperor Frederick 
was put under the ban,' says a German chronicler, 'the robbers 
rejoiced over the spoils. Then were the ploughshares beaten 
into swords and reaping-hooks into lances. No one went any- 
where without flint and steel to set on fire whatever he could 
kindle.' 

The ebb from the high-water mark of the Emperor's fortunes 
was marked by the revolt and successful resistance of the Guelf 
city of Parma to the imperial forces — a defeat Frederick might 
have wiped out in fresh victory had not his own health begun to 
fail. In 1250 he died, still excommunicate, snatched away to 
hell, according to his enemies, not dead, according to many who 
from love or hate believed his personality of more than human 
endurance. 

Yet Frederick, whether for good or ill, had perished, and with 
him his imperial ambitions. Popes might tremble at other 
nightmares, but the supremacy of the Holy Roman Empire over 
Italy would no more haunt their dreams for many years. Naples 
also, to whose conquest and government he had devoted the 
best of his brain and judgement, was torn from his heirs and 
presented by his papal enemy to the French House of Anjou. 
Struggling against these usurpers the last of the royal line of 
Hohenstaufen, Conradin, son of Conrad, a lad of fifteen, gallant 



Frederick II 195 

and reckless as his grandfather, was captured in battle and 
beheaded. 

Frederick had destroyed in Germany and built on sand else- 
where ; and of all his conquests and achievements only their 
memory was to dazzle after-generations. Stupor et Gloria Mundi 
he was called by those who knew him, and in spite of his ultimate 
failure and his vices he still remains a ' wonder of the world ', 
set above enemies and friends by his personality, the glory of his 
courage, his audacity, and his strength of purpose. 

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 

Pope Alexander III 1159-81 

Emperor Philip II 1 197- 1208 

Emperor Otto IV 1197-1215 

Fourth Lateran Council 1215 

The Sixth Crusade 1228-9 

Battle of Cortenuova . 1237 

Death of Conradin 1268 



O 2 



XV 

LEARNING AND ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION 
IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

The word ' progress ' implies to modern men and women 
a moving forward towards a perfection as yet unknown, freshly 
imagined indeed by each generation: to the Middle Ages it 
meant rather a peering back through the mist of barbarian 
invasions to an idealized Christian Rome. Inspiration lay in the 
past, not merely in such political conceptions as the Holy Roman 
Empire, but in the domain of art and thought, where too often 
tradition laid her choking grip upon originality struggling for 
expression. 

The painting of the early Middle Ages was stereotyped in the 
stiff though beautiful models of Byzantium, that ' Fathers of the 
Church ' had insisted, by means of decrees passed at Church 
councils, should be considered as fitting representations of 
Christian subjects for all time. Less impressive but more life- 
like were the illuminations of missals and hoi) 7 books, that, in 
illustrating the Gospels or lives of the Saints, reproduced the 
artist's own surroundings — the noble he could see from the window 
of his cell ride by with hawk or hounds, the labourer sowing or 
delving, the merchant with his money-bags, the man of fashion 
trailing his furred gown. 

Vignettes such as these, with their neat craftsmanship of line 
and colour, their almost photographic love of detail, lend a reality 
to our glimpses of life in Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth 
centuries ; yet great as is the debt we owe them, the real art ot 
the Middle Ages was not consummated with the brush but with 
the builder's tools and sculptor's chisel. 

Like the painter's, the architect's impulse was at first almost 
entirely religious, though guild-halls and universities followed 



Mediaeval Architecture 197 

on the erection of churches and monasteries. Nourished on 
St. Augustine's belief in this life as a mere transitory journey 
towards the eternal ' City of God ', mediaeval men and women 
saw this pilgrimage encompassed with a vast army of devils and 
saints, ranged in constant battle for the human soul. Only 
through faith and the kindly assistance of the Saints could man 
hope to beat off the legions of hell which hung like a pack of 
wolves about his footsteps, and nowhere with greater efficacy 
than in the sanctuary from which human prayer arose daily to 
God's throne. 

Churches and chapels in modern times have become the 
property of a section of the public — that is, of those who think 
or believe in a certain way ; and sometimes through poverty of 
purse or spirit, through bad workmanship or material, the 
architecture that results is shoddy or insignificant. In the 
Middle Ages his parish church was the most certain fact in 
every Christian's existence, from the day he was carried to the 
font for baptism until his last journey to rest beneath its shadow. 
Here he would make his confessions, his vows of repentance and 
amendment, and offer his worship and thanksgiving : here he 
would often find a fortified refuge from violence in the street 
outside, a school, a granary, a parish council-chamber. 

What more natural than that mediaeval artists, their souls 
attune with the hopes and fears of their age, should realize their 
genius best in constructing and ornamenting buildings that were 
to all citizens ajike the symbol of their belief? ' Let us build,' 
said the people of Siena in the thirteenth century, ' such a church 
to the glory of God that all men shall wonder ! ' 

The cathedral, when completed, was but a third in size and 
grandeur of the original design, for the Black Death fell upon 
Siena and carried off her builders in the midst of their work ; 
yet it remains magnificently arresting to modern eyes, as though 
the faith of those who planned and fashioned its slabs of black 
and white marble for the love of God and their city had breathed 
into their workmanship something of the mediaeval soul. 

The same is true of ' Notre Dame de la Victoire ' in Paris, 
founded by Philip Augustus, of which Victor Hugo says 'each 



198 Learning and Church Organization 

face, each stone, is a page of history'. It is true of nearly all 
mediaeval churches that have outlived the ravages of war and 
fire, memorials of an age, that if it lagged behind our own in 
ultimate achievement, was pre-eminent in one art at least 
— ecclesiastical architecture. 

Where the architect stopped the mediaeval sculptor took up 
his work, at first with simple severity but later in a riot of 
imagination that peopled facades, vaulted roofs, and capitals of 
columns with the angels, demons, and hybrid monsters that 
haunted the fancy of the day. The flying buttress, the invention 
of which made possible lofty clerestories with vast expanses of 
window, brought to perfection another art, the painting of glass. 
Here also the mediaeval artist excelled, and the crucibles in 
which he mixed the colours that hold us wrapt before the windows 
of Leon, Albi, and Chartres, still keep unsolved the secret of their 
transparent delicacy and depth. 

In the architecture, the sculpture, and in the stained glass of 
the Middle Ages we see original genius at work, but in learning 
and culture Europe was slower to throw off the giant influence 
of Rome. Even under the crushing inroads of barbarian 
ignorance Italy had managed to keep alive the study of classical 
authors and of Roman law. Latin remained the language of the 
educated man or woman, the language in which the services of 
the Church were recited, sermons were preached, correspondence 
carried on, business transacted, and students in universities and 
schools addressed by their professors. 

The advantages of a common tongue can be imagined : the 
comparative ease with which a pope or king could keep in touch 
with bishops or subjects of a different race ; the accessibility 
of the best books to students of all nations, since scarcely 
a mediaeval author of repute would condescend to employ his 
own tongue : above all perhaps the ease with which an ambassa- 
dor, a merchant, or a pilgrim could make himself understood on 
a journey across Europe, instead of torturing his brain with 
struggles after the right word in first one foreign dialect and 
then another. 

This classical form, so rigidly withholding knowledge from the 



Mediaeval Culture 199 

grasp of the ignorant, had also its disadvantage ; for many 
a mediaeval pen, that could have flown across the vellum in 
joyful intimacy in its owner's tongue, stumbled clumsily amidst 
Latin constructions, leaving in the end not a spontaneous record 
of current events, but a ' dry-as-dust ' catalogue, in bad imitation 
of some Latin stylist. The modern world is more grateful to 
mediaeval culture for such lapses as Dante's Divina Commedia 
than for all the heavy Latin tomes, whose authors hoped for 
laurelled immortality. 

For those in England and France who could not easily master 
Latin or found its stately periods too cumbrous for ordinary 
conversation, French, descended from the spoken Latin of the 
Roman soldier or merchant in Gaul, was in the Middle Ages, as 
to-day, the language of polite society. It possessed two distinct 
dialects, the 'langue d'ceil ' and the ' langue d'oc ', so called 
because the northern Frenchman, including the Norman, was 
supposed to pronounce out as ceil, while his southern fellow 
countryman pronounced it as oc. 

England, where, ever since the Conquest of William I, 
French had been the natural tongue of a semi-foreign court, owed 
an enormous literary impulse to the ' langue d'ceil ' during 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; while the ' langue d'oc ' that 
gave its name to a district in the south of France shared its 
poetry and romance between Provencals and Catalans. The 
descendants of the former are to-day French, of the latter 
Spanish : but in the eleventh century they were fellow subjects 
of the Counts of Toulouse, who ruled over a district stretching 
from the source of the Rhone to the Mediterranean, from the 
Italian Alps to the Ebro. 

In this semi-independent kingdom there developed a civilization 
and culture of hot-house growth, precocious in its appreciation 
of the less violent pleasures of life, such as love, art, music, 
literature, but often corrupt in their enjoyment. The gay court 
of Toulouse paid no heed to St. Augustine's hell, whose fears 
haunted the rest of Europe in its more thoughtful moments. 
Joyous and inconsequent, it lived for the passing hour, and out 
of its atmosphere of dalliance and culture was born a race of 



200 Learning and Church Organization 

poet-singers. These troubadours {trouvers = discoverers) sang 
of love, whose silken fetters could hold in thrall knights and fair 
ladies ; and their golden lyrics, now plaintive, now gay, were 
carried to the crowded cities of Italy and Spain, or found schools 
of imitators elsewhere, as in Germany amongst her thirteenth- 
century minnesingers (love-singers). In the north of France and 
in England appeared minstrels also, but their themes were less 
of love than of battle ; and audiences revelled by castle and 
camp-fire in the ' gestes ' or ' deeds ' of Charlemagne and his 
Paladins, the chivalry of Arthur and his Knights, or in stirring 
Border ballads such as Chevy Chase. 

The market-place, the camp, and the baronial hall, where were 
sung or recited these often imaginary stories of the past, were 
the schools of the many unlettered ; just as the conversation of 
Arabs and Jews around the desert fires had stimulated the 
imagination of the young Mahomet; but for the few who could 
afford a sounder education there were the universities — Paris, 
Bologna, Oxford, to name but three of the most famous. 

The word universitas implied in the Middle Ages a union 
of men ; such a corporation as the ' guilds ' formed by fishmongers 
and drapers to protect their trade interests; and the universities 
had indeed originated for a similar purpose. Cities to-day that 
have universities in their midst are proud of the fact, and 
welcome new students ; but in early mediaeval times an influx 
of young men of all ages from every part of Europe, many of 
them wild and unruly, some so poor that they must beg or steal 
their daily bread, was at first sight a very doubtful blessing. 
Street fights between nationalities who hated one another on 
principle, or between bands of students and citizens, were 
a common occurrence in the towns that learning honoured with 
her presence, and had their usual accompaniment of broken 
heads, fires, and looting. But for the universitas formed by 
masters and students to control and protect their members, these 
centres of education would probably have been stamped out by 
indignant tradesmen : as it was they had to fight for their 
existence. 

Municipalities looked with no lenient eye upon a corporation 



Mediaeval Universities 201 

that seemed to them a ' state within a state ', threatening their 
own right to govern all within the city. It was not until after 
many generations that they understood the meaning of the word 
co-operation, that is, the possibility of assisting instead of 
hindering the work of the universitas. Sometimes a. king 
like Philip Augustus insisted on toleration by granting to his 
students the 'privilege of clergy', but as the University grew it 
became able to enforce its own lessons. In the thirteenth century 
the Masters of Paris closed their lecture-halls and led away their 
flock, in protest for what they considered unfair treatment by 
the city authorities during a riot, and their absence taught 
Parisians that, in spite of head-breakings, the students were an 
asset, not a loss, to municipal life. Under the protection therefore 
of a papal 'bull ', they returned a few weeks later in triumph to 
the Latin Quarter. 

It was only by degrees that colleges where the students could 
live were erected, or that anything resembling the elaborate 
organization of a modern university was evolved. Students 
lodged where they could, and ' masters ' lived on the goodwill 
of those who paid their fees, and starved if their popularity 
waned and with it their audience. The life of both teacher and 
pupil was vague and hazardous, with a background of poverty 
and crime lurking at the street corners to ruin the unwary or 
foolish. Nor was the period of study a mere 'passing sojourn' 
like some modern ' terms ' : the Bachelor of Arts at Oxford or 
Paris must be a student of five years' standing, the Master of 
Arts calculated on devoting three years more to gaining his final 
degree, a Doctor of Theology would be faced with eight years' 
hard work at least. It might almost be said that higher education 
under these circumstances became a profession. 

To Bologna, the greatest of Italian universities, went those 
who wished to study Roman law at the fountain-head. This 
does not mean to stir up the legal dust of a dead empire out of 
a student's curiosity, but to master a living system of law that 
barbarian invaders had gradually grafted on to their own 
national codes. In the eleventh century the laws of Justinian 1 

1 See p. 49. 



202 Learning and Church Organization 

were as much or more revered than in his own day. We 
have seen that Frederick Barbarossa set the lawyers of Bologna 
to work to justify from old legal documents the claims he wished 
to establish over Lombardy ; and when they had succeeded to 
his satisfaction he rewarded them with gifts and knighthood, 
showing what value he put on their achievement. This is a very 
good example of the respect felt by mediaeval minds for the laws 
and title-deeds of an earlier age, even though the tyranny that 
resulted led the ' Lombard League ' to dispute such claims. 

Still more closely allied than the civil codes of Europe to the 
old Roman legal texts was the ' Canon ' law of the Church that 
had been directly based upon classic models ; and with the rise 
of Hildebrand's world-wide ambitions its decisions assumed 
a growing importance and demanded an enormous army of 
trained lawyers to interpret and arrange them. For youths of 
a practical and ambitious turn of mind here was a course of study 
leading to a profession profitable in all ages ; and a text-book 
was provided for such budding lawyers in the decretum of 
Gratian, a monk who in the twelfth century compiled a full and 
authoritative text of Canon law. 

The existence of the Ecclesiastical Courts, in which Canon law 
was administered, we have already mentioned in discussing the 
quarrel of Henry II of England and Thomas Becket. 1 Founded 
originally to deal with purely ecclesiastical cases and officials, 
they tended in time to draw within their competence any one over 
whom the Church could claim protection and any causes that 
affected the rites of the Catholic Church. It was a wide net 
with a very small mesh, as the Angevin Henry II and other lay 
rulers of Europe found. The protection that spread its wings 
over priests and clerks stretched also to crusaders, widows, and 
orphans: the jurisdiction of the Church Courts claimed not 
merely moral questions such as heresy, sacrilege, and perjury, 
but all matters connected with probate of wills, marriage and 
divorce, and even libel. 

Rome became a hive of ecclesiastical lawyers, with the Pope, 
like the Roman emperors of old, the supreme law-giver and 

See p. 164. 



Mediaeval Papal Government 203 

final court of appeal for all Church Courts of Europe. His rule 
was absolute, at least in theory, for by his power of dispensation ' 
he could set aside, if he considered advisable, the very Canon law 
his officials administered. He could also summon to his curia, 
or papal court, any case on which he wished to pronounce judge- 
ment, at whatever stage in its litigation in an inferior ecclesiastical 
court. 

Under the Pope in an ordered hierarchy, corresponding to the 
feudal arrangement of lay society, came the metropolitans, who 
received from his hand or from those of his legates the narrow 
woollen scarf, or pallium, that was the symbol of their authority. 
Next in order came the diocesan bishops with their 'officials', 
the archdeacons and rural deans, each with their own court and 
measure of jurisdiction. 

The Pope's will went forth to Christendom in the form of letters 
called ' bulls ', from the bulla or heavy seal that was attached 
to them. Against those who paid no heed to their contents he 
could hurl either the weapon of excommunication — that is, of 
personal outlawry from the Church — or else, if the offender 
were a king or a city, the still more blasting ' interdict ' that fell 
on ruler and ruled alike. The land that groaned under an 
interdict was bereft of all spiritual comfort : no priest might say 
public Mass, baptize a new-born child, perform the marriage 
service, console the dying with 'supreme unction', or bury the 
dead. The very church bells would ring no more. 

It was under this pressure of spiritual starvation, when the 
Saints seemed to have withdrawn their sheltering arms and the 
demons to have gathered joyfully to a harvest of lost souls, that 
John of England was brought by the curses of his people to turn 
to Rome in repentance and submission. Yet, as in the case of 
most weapons, familiarity bred contempt, and too frequent use of 
powers of 'interdict ' and ' excommunication ' was to blunt their 
efficacy — a Frederick II, the oft-excommunicated, proved able to 
conquer Jerusalem and dominate Italy even under the papal ban. 

The Church, in her claims to world empire, demanded in truth 
an obedience it was beyond her ability to enforce. She also laid 
herself open to temptations to which from the nature of her 



204 Learning and Church Organization 

temporal ambitions "she must inevitably succumb. No such 
elaborate and expensive administration as emanated from her 
curia could continue without an inexhaustible flow of money 
into her treasury. Lawyers, priests, legates, cardinals, the Pope 
himself, had each to be maintained in a state befitting their office 
in the eyes of a world, as ready in the thirteenth century as in 
the twentieth to judge by appearances and offer its homage 
accordingly. 

In addition to the ordinary expenses of a ruler, whose court 
was a centre of religious and intellectual life for Europe, there 
was the constant burden of war, first with neighbouring Italian 
rulers and then with the Empire. Innocent IV triumphed over 
the Hohenstaufen ; but largely by dipping his hands into English 
money-bags, to such an extent indeed during the reign of John's 
son, Henry III, that England gained the scoffing name of the 
' milch cow of the Papacy \ 

At first, when the ecclesiastical courts had offered to criminals 
a justice at once more humane and comprehensive than the rough- 
and-ready tyranny of a king or feudal lord, the upholders of the 
rights of Canon law were regarded as popular heroes. Later, 
however, with the growth of national feeling and the development 
and better administration of the civil codes, men and women 
began to falter in their allegiance. Canon law was found to be 
both expensive and tardy, especially in the case of ' appeals ', that 
is, of cases called from some inferior court to Rome. The key 
also to the judgements given at Rome was often too obviously 
gold and of heavy weight. 

Nor was justice alone to be bought or sold. A large part of 
the money that filled the Roman treasury was derived from 
benefices and livings in different countries of Europe that had 
by one means or another accumulated in papal hands. The 
constant pressure of the wars with emperors and Italian 
Ghibellines made it necessary for the Popes to administer this 
patronage as profitably as possible ; and so the spiritual needs 
of dioceses and parishes became sacrificed to the military calls 
on the Roman treasury. 

Sometimes it was not a living itself for which a clerical candidate 



Papal Exactions 205 

paid heavily, but merely the promise of ' preferment ' to the next 
vacancy; or he would pledge himself in the case of nomination 
to send his ' firstfruits ', that is, his first year's revenue, to 
Rome. Those who could afford the requisite sum might be 
natives of the country in which the vacant bishopric or living 
occurred : often they were not, and the successful nominee, instead 
of going in person to exercise his duties, would merely send an 
agent to collect his dues. These dues came from many different 
sources, but in the case of livings principally from the ' tithe ', a 
tax for the maintenance of the Church, supposed to represent 
one-tenth of every man's income. 

People usually grumble when they are continually asked for 
money, and mediaeval men and women were no exception to 
this rule. Thus, to take the case of England, while the wars 
between Emperor and Pope left her comparatively indifferent as 
to the issues involved, the growing exactions of the Roman curia 
that touched her pockets awoke a smouldering resentment that 
every now and then flared into hostility 

'In these times', wrote the chronicler, Matthew Paris, 'the 
small fire of faith began to grow exceeding chill, so that it was 
well nigh reduced to ashes . . . for now was simony practised with- 
out shame. . . . Every day illiterate persons of the lowest class, 
armed with bulls from Rome, feared not to plunder the revenues 
which our pious forefathers had assigned for the maintenance of 
the Religious, the support of the poor, and the sustaining of 
strangers.' 

At Oxford in the reign of Henry III (1216-72), the papal 
legate was forced to fly from the town by indignant 'clerks' of the 
university, or undergraduates as we should call them to-day. 
' Where is that usurer, that simoniac, that plunderer of revenues, 
that thirster for money? ' they cried, as they hunted him and his 
retinue through the streets, ' it is he who perverts the King and 
subverts the kingdom to enrich foreigners with our spoils.' 

At Lincoln Bishop Grosstete indignantly refused to invest 
Innocent IV's nephew, a boy of twelve, with the next vacant 
prebendary of his cathedral. Other papal relatives were absorb- 
ing livings and bishoprics elsewhere in Europe, for under 
Innocent IV began the open practice of ' nepotism ', that is, of 



206 Learning and Church Organization 

Popes using their revenues and their office in order to provide 
for their nephews and other members of their families. 

' He laid aside all shame/ says Matthew Paris of this Pope, 
' he extorted larger sums of money than any before him.' The 
' sums of money ' enabled Rome to cast down her imperial foe, 
but the extortion was a dangerous expedient. Throughout the 
early Middle Ages the Pope had been accepted by Western 
Christendom as speaking for the Church with the voice of Christ's 
authority. In his disputes with kings the latter could never be 
sure of the loyalty of their people, should they call on them to 
take up arms against the ' Holy Father '. 

With the growth of nations and of Rome as a temporal power 
a gradual change came over the European outlook ; subjects 
were more inclined to obey rulers whom they knew than a distant 
potentate whom they did not ; they were also less ready to accept 
papal interference without criticism. Thus a distinction was for 
the first time drawn between the Pope and the Church. 

When King Hako of Norway was offered the imperial crown 
on the deposition of Frederick II by Innocent IV, he refused, 
saying, ' I will gladly fight the enemies of the Church, but I will 
not fight against the foes of the Pope.' His words were significant 
of a new spirit. In the feuds of Guelfs and Ghibellines that 
racked the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were laid the founda- 
tions of a movement to control the Popes by Universal Councils 
in the fifteenth, and of that still more drastic opposition to his 
powers in the sixteenth that we call the Reformation. 



XVI 

THE FAITH OF THE MIDDLE AGES 

A modern student, when he passes from school to a university, 
soon finds that he is standing at a cross-roads : he cannot hope, 
like a philosopher of the sixteenth century, to ' take all knowledge 
for his province ', but must choose which of the many signposts 
he will follow — law, classics, science, economics, chemistry, 
medicine, to name but a few of the more important. Mediaeval 
minds would have been sorely puzzled by some of these 
avenues of knowledge, while the rest they would denounce as 
mere sidetracks, leading by a devious route to the main high 
road of theology. Science, for instance, the patient searching 
after truth by building up knowledge from facts, and accepting 
nothing as a fact that had not been verified by proof, was a closed 
book in the thirteenth century. 

Roger Bacon, an English friar, one of the first to attempt 
scientific experiments, was regarded with such suspicion on 
account of his researches and his sarcastic comments on the 
views of his day that he was believed to be in league with 
the devil ; and even the favour of a pope more enlightened 
than most of his contemporaries could not save him in later years 
from imprisonment as a suspected magician. 

Men and women hate to change the ideas in which they have 
been brought up ; and in the thirteenth century they readily 
accepted as facts such fabulous stories told by early Christian 
writers as that of the phoenix who at five hundred years old 
casts herself into a sacred fire, emerging renewed in health and 
vigour from her own ashes, or of the pelican killing her young 
at. birth and reviving them in three days, or of the unicorn 
resisting all the wiles of the hunter but captured easily by a pure 
maiden. The charm of such natural history lay to mediaeval 



208 The Faith of the Middle Ages 

minds not in its legendary quaintness but in the use to which it 
could be turned in pointing a moral or adorning the doctrines 
of theology. 

Theology was the chief course of study at Paris, just as Roman 
law reigned at Bologna. It comprised a thorough mastery 
of the Scriptures as expounded by ' Fathers of the Church ', and 
also of what was then known through Latin and Arabic transla- 
tions of the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Although 
he had been a pagan, Aristotle was almost as much revered by 
many mediaeval theologians as St. Jerome or St. Augustine, and 
it was their life-work to try and reconcile his views with those of 
Catholic Christianity. 

The philosophy that resulted from the study of these very 
different authorities is called ' scholasticism ', and those who gave 
patient years of thought to the arguments that built up and 
maintained its theories the 'schoolmen '. 

The first of the great Paris theologians was Peter Abelard, 
a Breton— handsome, self-confident, ready of tongue and brain. 
Having studied 'dialectics', that is, the system of reasoning by 
which the mediaeval mind constructed its philosophy, he aroused 
the disgust of his masters by drawing away their pupils, through 
his eloquence and originality, as soon as he understood the 
subject-matter sufficiently to lecture on his own account. 

In Paris so many young men of his day crowded round his 
desk that Abelard has been sometimes called the founder of the 
university. This is not true, but his popularity may be said to 
have decided that Paris rather than any other town should 
become the intellectual centre of France. Greedily his audience 
listened while he endeavoured to prove by human reason beliefs 
that the Church taught as a matter of faith ; and, though he had 
set out with the intention of defending her, it was with the 
Church that he soon came into conflict. 

One of his books, called Yes and No, contained a brief 
summary of the views of early Christian Fathers on various 
theological questions. Drawn into such close proximity some 
of these views were found to conflict, and the Breton lecturer 
became an object of suspicion in ecclesiastical quarters, especially 



Scholasticism 209 

to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who believed that human reason 
was given to man merely that he might accept the teaching of the 
Church, not to raise arguments or criticisms concerning it. 

' Peter Abelard ', he wrote to the Pope, ' is trying to make void 
the merit of Christian faith when he deems himself able by human 
reason to comprehend God altogether . . . the man is great in 
his own eyes . . . this scrutinizer of Majesty and fabricator of 
heresies.' 

The minds of the two men were indeed utterly opposed — types 
of conflicting human thought in all ages. St. Bernard, in spite 
of his frank denunciations of the sins of the Church, was docile 
to the voice of her authority, and hated and feared the pride 
of the human intellect as the deadliest of all sins. Abelard, by 
nature inquisitive and sceptical, regarded his deft brain as 
a surgeon's knife, given him to cut away diseased or worn-out 
tissues from the thought of his day in order to leave it healthier 
and purer. 

As antagonists they were no match, for St. Bernard was infinitely 
the greater man, without any of the other's petty vanity and 
worldliness to confuse the issue for which they struggled : he had 
behind him also the sympathy of mediaeval minds not as yet 
awakened to any spirit of inquiry, and so the Breton was driven 
into the retirement of a monk's cell and his condemned works 
publicly burned. 

One of his pupils, Peter Lombard, adopted his master's 
methods without arousing the anger of the orthodox by any 
daring feats of controversy, and produced a Book of Sentences 
{sententiae— opinions) that became the text-book for scholasticism, 
just as the Decretum was the authority for students of Roman 
law. Without being a work of genius the Sentences cleared 
a pathway through the jungle of mediaeval thought for more 
original minds, while the discovery in the latter half of the 
twelfth century of several hitherto unknown works of Aristotle 
gave added zest to the researches of the ' Schoolmen '. Greatest 
of all these ' Schoolmen ' was Thomas Aquinas, ' the Angelic 
Doctor', as he has sometimes been called. 

Aquihas was a Neapolitan of noble family, who ran away 



2io The Faith of the Middle Ages 

from home as a boy to join the Dominicans, an Order of wander- 
ing preachers of whose foundation we shall shortly speak. 
Thomas was recaptured and brought home by his elder 
brother, a noble at the court of Frederick II ; but neither threats 
nor imprisonment could persuade the young novice to give up 
the life he had chosen. After a year he broke the bars of his 
window, escaped from Naples, and went to Cologne and Paris, 
where he studied theology, emerging from this education the 
greatest lecturer and teacher of his day. In his Samma Theo- 
logiae, his best-known book, he set forth his belief in man's 
highest good as the chief thought of God, using both the 
commentaries of the Church Fathers and the works of Aristotle 
as quarries to provide the material for fashioning his arguments. 
Like Abelard, he believed in the voice of reason, but without 
any of the Breton's probing scepticism. Human reason bridled 
by divine grace was the guide he sought to lead his pen through 
the maze of theology ; and so clear and judicial were his methods, 
so brilliant the intellect that shone through his writings, that 
Aquinas became for later generations an authority almost equal 
to St. Augustine. 

The intense preoccupation of mediaeval minds with theology 
and the importance attached to ' right belief are the most striking 
mental characteristics of the period with which we are dealing. 
To-day we are inclined to judge a man by his actions rather 
than by his beliefs, to sum up a character as good or bad 
because its owner is generous or selfish, kind or cruel, brave or 
cowardly. In the twelfth or thirteenth centuries this would 
have seemed a wholly false standard. The ideal of conduct, for 
one thing, maintained by monks like St. Bernard of Clairvaux 
was so exalted that, to the ordinary men and women in an age 
of cruelty and fierce passions, a good life seemed impossible 
save for Saints. The sins and failings of the rest of the world 
received a very easy pardon except from ascetics ; and it was 
generally felt that God in His mercy, through the intercession 
of the kindly Saints, would be compassionate to human weakness 
so long as the sinner repented, confessed, and clung to a belief 
in the teaching of the Church. This teaching, or ' Faith ', 



Mediaeval Faith 2 1 1 

declared to have been given by Christ to His Apostles, set forth 
in the writings of the Christian Fathers, gathered together in 
the Creeds and Sacraments defined by Church Councils, preached 
and expounded by the clergy and theologians, defended by the 
Pope, was the torch that could alone guide man's wavering 
footsteps to the ' City of God '. 

• Do you know what I shall gain/ asked a French Count of 
the thirteenth century, ' in that during this mortal life I have 
believed as Holy Church teaches? I shall have a crown in the 
Heavens above the angels, for the angels cannot but believe 
inasmuch as they see God face to face.' 

Heresy — the refusal to accept the teaching of the Church— was 
the one unpardonable sin, a moral leprosy worse in mediaeval 
eyes than any human disease because it affected the soul, not 
the body, and the life of the soul was everlasting. The heretic 
must be suppressed, converted if possible, but if not, burned and 
forgotten like a diseased rag, lest his wrong beliefs should infect 
others and so lose their souls also eternally. To-day we know 
that neither suppression nor burnings can ultimately extinguish 
that independence of thought and spirit of inquiry that are as 
much the motive power of some human natures as the acceptance 
of authority is of others. Tolerance, and how far it can be 
extended to actions as well as beliefs, is one of the problems 
that the world is still studying. The towns and provinces, where 
the first battles were fought, are sown with the blood and ashes 
of those who neither sought nor offered the way of compromise 
as a solution. 

Another of Abelard's pupils, besides the orthodox Peter 
Lombard, was an Italian, Arnold of Brescia — in many ways 
a man of like intellect with his master, self-centred, restless, and 
ambitious. When he returned home from the University he at 
once took a violent part in the life of the Brescian commune, 
declaring publicly that the Church should return to the days of 
' apostolic poverty ', and urging the citizens to cast off the yoke of 
their bishop. Exiled from Italy by the anger of the Pope and 
clergy at his views he went again to Paris, where he taught 
in the University until by the King's command he was driven 

p 2 



212 The Faith of the Middle Ages 

away. He next found a refuge in Germany under the protection 
of a papal legate, who had known and admired him in earlier 
days ; but this news aroused the furious anger of St. Bernard. 

'Arnold of Brescia,' he wrote to the legate, 'whose speech 
is honey . . . whose doctrine poison, the man whom Brescia 
has vomited forth, whom Rome abhors, whom France drives 
into exile, whom Germany curses, whom Italy refuses to re- 
ceive, obtains thy support. To be his friend is to be the foe 
of the Pope and God.' 

The legate contrived by mediation to reconcile the heretic 
temporarily with the Church ; but Arnold was by nature a fire- 
brand, and, having settled in Rome, soon became leader in one 
of the many plots to make that city a ' Free Town ', owing 
allegiance only to the Emperor. Largely through his efforts 
the Pope was compelled to go into exile ; but later the Romans, 
under the fear of an interdict that would deprive them of the 
visits of pilgrims out of whom they usually made their living, 
deserted him ; and the republican leader was forced to fly. 
Captured amongst the Italian hills, he was taken to Rome and 
burned, his ashes being thrown into the Tiber lest they should 
be claimed as relics by those of the populace who still loved 
him. His judges need not have taken this precaution, for neither 
Arnold's religious nor political views could claim any large 
measure of public approval in his own day. Elsewhere, indeed, 
heresy and rebellion were seething, but it was not till the 
beginning of the thirteenth century that the outbreak became 
a vital problem for the Papacy. 

The widest area of heresy was in the provinces of Languedoc 
and Provence, to whose precocious mental development we 
have already referred. 1 The Counts of „ Toulouse no longer 
ruled in the thirteenth century over any of modern Spain, but 
north of the Pyrenees they were tenants-in-chief to the French 
king for one of the most fertile provinces of southern France, 
while as Marquesses of Provence they were vassals of the 
Emperor for the country beyond the Rhone. 

Semi-independent of the control of either of these overlords, 

1 See p. 199. 



Heresy in Languedoc 213 

Count Raymond VI presided over a court famed for its luxury 
and gaiety of heart, its light morals, and unorthodox religious 
views. When he received complaints from Rome that his people 
were deriding the Catholic Faith and stoning his bishops and 
priests, he scarcely pretended regret, for his sceptical nature 
was quite unshocked by heresy, and both he and his nobles fully 
approved of popular insistence on ' apostolic poverty ', a doctrine 
that enabled them to appropriate ecclesiastical lands and revenues 
for their own purposes. 

The heretical sects in Languedoc were many : perhaps the 
most important those of the Albigenses and Waldensians. The 
former practically denied Christianity, maintaining that good 
and evil were co-equal powers, and that Christ's death was of 
no avail to save mankind. The Waldensians, or ' Poor men of 
Lyons ', on the other hand, had at first tried to find acceptance 
for their beliefs within the Church. Peter Waldo, their founder, 
a rich merchant of Lyons, had translated some of the Gospels 
from Latin into the language of the countryside, and, having given 
away all his goods, he travelled from village to village, preaching, 
and trying with his followers to imitate the lives of the Apostles 
in simplicity and poverty. 

In spite of condemnation from the Pope, who was suspicious 
of their teaching, the Waldensians increased in number. They 
declared that the authority of the Bible was superior to that of 
the Church, appointed ministers of their own, and denied many 
of the principal articles of Faith that the Church insisted were 
necessary to salvation. 

The mediaeval Church taught that only through belief in these 
articles of Faith, that is, in the Creeds and Sacraments (sacra- 
mentum = something sacred), as administered by the clergy, 
could man hope to be saved. The most important of the 
Sacraments, of which there were seven, was the miracle of the 
Mass, sometimes called ' transubstantiation '. Its origin was 
the Last Supper, when Christ before His crucifixion gave His 
disciples bread and wine, saying ' Take, eat, this is my body. 
'Take, drink, this is my blood which was shed for you.' The 
mediaeval Church declared that every time at the service of 



214 The Faith of the Middle Ages 

Mass the priest offered up 'the Host', or consecrated bread, 
Christ was sacrificed anew for the sins of the world, and that 
the bread became in truth converted into the substance of His 
body. 

The Waldensians, and many sects that later broke away from 
the tenets of the mediaeval Church, denied this miracle and 
also the sacred character of the priests who could perform it. 
According to the Church, her clergy at ordination received 
through the laying on of the bishop's hands some of the 
mysterious power that Christ had given to St. Peter, conferring 
on them the power also to forgive sins. No matter if the priest 
became idle or vicious, he still by virtue of his ordination 
retained his sacred character, and to lay hands upon him was 
to incur the wrath of God. 

Even in the twelfth century, when St. Bernard travelled in 
Languedoc, he had been horrified to find 'the sacraments no 
longer sacred and priests without respect'. His attempts at 
remonstrance were met with stones and threats, while the 
establishment of an ' episcopal inquisition ' to inquire into and 
stamp out this hostility only increased Provencal bitterness and 
determination. 

' I would rather be a Jew,' was an expression of disdain in 
the Middle Ages ; but in Toulouse the people said, ' I had 
rather be a priest,' and the clergy who walked abroad were 
forced to conceal their tonsures for fear of assault. 

'Heresy can only be destroyed by solid instruction' was 
Innocent Ill's first verdict. 'It is by preaching the truth that 
we sap foundations of error.' He therefore sent some 
Cistercians to hold a mission in Languedoc, and in their com- 
pany travelled a young Spaniard, Dominic de Guzman, burning 
to win souls for the Faith or suffer martyrdom. The Cistercians 
rode on horses with a large train of servants and with wagons 
drawn by oxen to carry their clothes and their food. This dis- 
play aroused the scornful mirth of the Albigenses and Walden- 
sians. ' See,' they cried, ' the wealthy missionaries of a God 
who was humble and despised, loaded with honours ! ' 

Everywhere were the same ridicule and contempt, and it was in 



The Albigensian Crusade 215 

this moment of failure that Dominic the Spaniard interposed, 
speaking earnestly to those who were with him of the contrast 
between the heretic ministers in their lives of poverty and self- 
denial with the luxury and worldliness of the local clergy, and 
even with the ostentatious parade of his fellow preachers. Be- 
cause he had long practised austerities himself, wearing a hair 
shirt, fasting often, and denying himself every pleasure, the 
young Spaniard received a respectful hearing, and so fired 
the Cistercians with his enthusiasm that they sent away their 
horses and baggage-wagons, and set out on foot through the 
country to try and win the populace by different methods. 
With them went Dominic, barefoot, exulting in this opportunity 
of bearing witness in the face of danger to the Faith he held so 
precious. 

The attitude of the men and women of Languedoc towards the 
papal mission was no longer derisive but it remained hostile, for 
they also held their Faith sacred, while all the racial prejudice 
of the countryside was thrown into the balance of opposition to 
Rome. Thus converts were few, and angry gatherings at which 
stones were thrown at the strangers many; and so matters 
drifted on and the mission grew more and more discouraged. 

In 1208 occurred a violent crisis, for the papal legate, having 
excommunicated Count Ra}miond of Toulouse for. appropriating 
certain Church lands and refusing to restore them, was murdered, 
and the Count himself implicated in the crime, seeing that, as in 
the case of Henry II and Becket, it had been his angry curses 
that had prompted some knights to do the deed. Innocent III 
at once declared the Count deposed, and preached a crusade 
against him and his subjects as heretics. 

Twenty years of bloodshed and cruelty followed ; for under 
the command of the French Count Simon de Montfort, an utterly 
unscrupulous and brutal general, the orthodox legions of 
northern France gathered at the papal summons to stamp out 
the independence of the south that they had always hated as 
a rival. Languedoc, her nobles and people united, fought hard 
for her religious and political freedom ; but the struggle was 
uneven, and she was finally forced into submission. Thirty 



216 The Faith of the Middle Ages 

thousand of her sons and daughters had perished, and with 
them the civilization and culture that had made the name of 
Provence glorious in mediaeval Europe. 

The name of Dominic the Spaniard does not appear in the 
bloodstained annals of the Albigensian Crusade. He had 
advocated ver}^ different measures ; and in 1216, pursuing his 
ideal, received from the Pope leave to form an Order of 
' Preaching Brothers ', modelled on the Monastic Orders, except 
that the ' Friars ' {Fratres = brothers), as these monks were 
called, were commanded not to live permanently in communities 
but to spend their lives travelling about from village to village, 
preaching as they went. They were to beg their daily bread ; 
and the very Order itself was forbidden to acquire wealth, their 
founder hoping by this stringent rule to prevent the worldliness 
that had corrupted the other religious communities. 

Dominic, or St. Dominic, for the enthusiasm of the mediaeval 
Church soon canonized him, was a son of his age in his intense 
devotion to the Faith ; but his spiritual outlook was beyond the 
comprehension of all save a few. In Innocent III may be 
found a more typical figure of the early thirteenth century ; and 
to Innocent's standard, and not to that of their founder, the 
followers of St. Dominic for the most part conformed. 

Pope Innocent had advocated the driving out of error by right 
teaching ; but his failure by this method woke in him an exaspera- 
tion that made the obstinate heresy of Languedoc seem a moral 
and social plague to be suppressed ruthlessly. Thorough in this- 
undertaking as in all to which he set his mind and hand, he 
added to the slaughter of Simon de Montfort's Crusade the 
terrible and efficient machinery of the Inquisition, and this 
during the pontificate of Gregory IX was transferred from the 
jurisdiction of local bishops to that of the Papal See. The 
Inquisitors, empowered to discover heresy and convert the 
heretic by torture and fire, were mainly Dominicans, selected 
for this task on account of their theological training and the 
very devotion to the Faith on which their founder had laid such 
stress. 

The most important political fruits of the Albigensian Crusade 



-St. Francis of Assisi 217 

were gathered by Philip II of France, who had himself stood 
aloof from the struggle, although permitting and encouraging 
his nobles to take the Cross. By the deposition and fall of his 
powerful tenant-in-chief, the Count of Toulouse, the centre and 
. south of France, hitherto so proudly independent, lost a formid- 
able ally; and large tracts of Poitou and Aquitaine fell under 
royal influence and were incorporated amongst the crown 
lands. 

This process continued under Philip's son, Louis VIII, who 
himself joined in the Crusade and marched with an army down 
the valley of the Rhone, capturing Avignon, and arriving almost 
at the gates of Toulouse. His sudden illness and death brought 
the campaign to an end ; but his widow, Blanche of Castile, 
acting as regent for her son the boy King Louis IX, concluded 
a treaty with the new Count of Toulouse, Raymond VII, that 
left that noble a chastened and submissive vassal of both king 
and pope. Amongst other things he was forced to acknowledge 
one of the French king's younger brothers as his successor in 
the County of Provence. 

It is pleasant to turn from the Albigensian Crusade, one of 
the blackest pictures of the Middle Ages, to its best and brightest, 
the story of St. Francis of Assisi. 

In 1 182 there was born at Assisi, a little Umbrian village, 
a boy whom his mother named John, but whom his father, 
a rich merchant, who had lately travelled in France, nicknamed 
'Francis', or 'the Frenchman'. St. Dominic had developed his 
fiery faith in an austere and intensely religious home; but 
Francis shared the light-hearted sociable intercourse of an 
Italian town, and in boyhood was distinguished only from his 
fellows by his generosity, innate purity, and irrepressible joy 
in life. 

When he grew up, Francis went to fight with the forces of 
Assisi against the neighbouring city of Perugia, and was taken 
prisoner with some others of his fellow townsmen and thrown into 
a dungeon. The grumbling and bitterness of the majority during 
that twelve months of captivity were very natural ; but Francis, 
unlike the rest, met the general discomfort with serene good- 



2i 8 The Faith of the Middle. Ages 

humour, even merriment, so that not for the last time in his career 
he was denounced as crazy. 

On his release and return home, the merchant Bernadone 
wished his son to cut some figure in the world ; and when the 
young man dreamed of shining armour and military glory, he 
provided him with all he had asked in the way of clothes and 
accoutrements and sent him in the train of a wealthy noble who 
was going to fight in Naples. 

Half-way on his journey Francis turned back to Assisi. God, 
he believed, had told him to do so — why he could not tell. He 
tried to follow the frivolous life he had led before, but now the 
laughter of his companions seemed to ring hollow in his ears. 
It was as*if they found pleasure in a shadow, while he alone was 
conscious that somewhere close was a reality of joy that, if he 
could only discover it, would illumine the whole world. 

Then his call came ; but to the comfortable citizens of Assisi 
it seemed the voice of madness. The young Bernadone, it was 
rumoured, had been seen in the company of lepers and entertain- 
ing beggars at his table. Almost all the money and goods he 
possessed he had given away ; nay, there came a final word that 
he had sold his horse and left his home to live in a cave outside 
the town. The people shook their heads at such folly and 
sympathized with the old Bernadone at this end to his fine 
ambitions for his son. 

Pietro Bernadone in truth had developed such a furious anger 
that he appealed to the Bishop of Assisi, entreating him either 
to persuade Francis to give up his new way of life or else to 
compel him to surrender the few belongings he had still left. 
Francis was then summoned, and in the bishop's presence 
handed back to his father his purse and even his very clothes. 
Penniless he stood before Assisi who had often ridden through 
the streets a rich man's heir, and it was a beggar's grey robe 
with a white cross roughly chalked upon it that he adopted as 
the uniform of his new career. 

His fellow townsmen had been moved by this complete 
renunciation ; but mingled at first with their admiration was a 
half-scornful incredulity. They could understand saints ardent 



St. Francis of Assisi 219 

in defence of the Faith against heresy, fiery in their denunciation 
of all worldly pleasures, for such belonged to the religious 
atmosphere of the Middle Ages; but this son of Assisi, who 
raised no banner in controversy, and found an equal joy of life in 
the sunshine on a hill-side, in the warmth of a fire, in the squalor 
of a slum, was at first beyond their spiritual vision. 

Yet Francis Bernadone belonged as truly to the mediaeval 
world as St. Dominic or St. Bernard of Clairvaux. In his spirit 
was mingled the self-denial of the ' Poor Men of Lyons ' and the 
romance of the Provencal singers. These troubadours sang 
of knights whose glory and boast were the life-service_of some 
incomparable lady. Francis exulted in his servitude to ' My 
Lady Poverty', his soul aflame with a chivalry in contrast to 
which the conventional devotion of poets burned dim. 

In honour of ' My Lady Poverty' the rich merchant's son had 
cast away his father's affection, his military ambitions, his 
comfortable home and gay clothes ; and because of the strength 
and depth of his devotion the surrender left no bitterness, only 
an intense joy that found beauty amid the rags, disease, and 
filth of the most sordid surroundings. 

For some time it never occurred to Francis to found an Order 
from amongst the men who, irresistibly drawn by his sincerity 
and joy, wished to become his followers and share his privations 
and work amongst the poor and sick. When they asked him for 
a ' rule of life ', such as that possessed by the monastic founda- 
tions, he led them to the nearest church. In the words of a 
chronicler : 

' Commencing to pray (because they were simple men and did 
not know where to find the Gospel text relating to the renouncing 
of the world), they asked the Lord devoutly that He would deign 
to show them His will at the first opening of the Book. 

'When they had prayed, the blessed Francis, taking in his 
hands the closed Book, kneeling before the Altar opened it, and 
his eye fell first upon the precept of the Lord, " If thou wouldst 
be perfect, sell all that thou hast and give to the poor and thou 
shalt have treasure in Heaven " : at which the blessed Francis 
was very glad and gave thanks to God.' 

Thus, in dedication to the service of ' My Lady Poverty ', the 



220 The Faith of the Middle Ages 

Order of the 'Lesser Brethren' (Minorites), or the 'Poor Men 
of Assisi', was founded and received permission from Innocent III 
to carry on its work amongst lepers and outcasts, though it was 
not till 1223 that formal sanction for an Order was received 
from Rome. 

Three years later St. Francis died, and the Friars who had 
lived with him declared that he had followed Christ so closely 
that in his hands and feet were found the 'stigmata' or marks 
of the wounds his Master had endured in the agony of crucifixion. 
Tales have been handed down of his humility and gentleness, 
of how, in the early days of the Order, he would go himself and 
beg the daily bread for his small community rather than send 
his companions to encounter possible insults ; of how, in an age 
that set little store even by human lives, he would rescue doves 
in their cages that lads carried about for sale, and set them 
free ; and of how, because he read something of God's soul in 
every creature that had life, he preached to the birds as well as 
to men. 

Brotherhood to the friar of Assisi meant the union not only 
of all human souls but of all creation in the praise of God, and 
daily he offered thanks for the help of his brothers, the sun, the 
fire, and the wind ; and for his sisters, the moon and the water ; 
and for his mother, the earth. It was his love of nature, most 
strange to the thirteenth century, that is one of the strongest 
bonds between St. Francis and the men and women of to-day. 

' He told the brother who made the garden ', says his chronicler, 
' not to devote all of it to vegetables, but to have some part for 
flowering plants, which in their season produce "brother flowers " 
for love of Him who is called " Flower of the Field " and "Lily 
of the Valley". He said, indeed, that Brother Gardener always 
ought to make a beautiful patch in some part of the garden and 
plant it with all sorts of sweet-smelling herbs, and herbs that 
produce beautiful flowers, so that in their season they may invite 
men, seeing them, to praise the Lord. For every creature cries 
aloud, " God made me for thy sake, O Man ! " ' 

Once the true beauty of St. Francis's life was recognized, his 
followers increased rapidly and no longer had to fear insult or 
injury when they begged. Crowds, indeed, collected to hear 



The Franciscan Order 221 

them preach and to bring them offerings. Some Franciscans 
settled in France and Germany, and others went to England 
during the reign of Henry III and lived amid the slums of 
London, Oxford, and Norwich, wherever it seemed to them 
that they could best serve 'Lady Poverty'. 

St. Francis himself before he died had been puzzled and 
almost alarmed by the popularity he had never courted, and he 
confessed sadly that, instead of living the lives of Saints, some 
of those who professed to follow him were ' fain to receive praise 
and honour by rehearsing and preaching the works that the 
Saints did themselves achieve '. 

He was right in his fear for the future. Rules are a dead 
letter without the spirit of understanding that gives them a true 
obedience ; and the secret of his joyous and unassuming self- 
denial Francis could only bequeath to a few. Preaching, not 
for the sake of helping man and glorifying God, but in order to 
earn the wealth and esteem their founder had held as dross — 
this was the temptation to which the 'Grey Brethren' succumbed, 
even within the generation that had known St. Francis himself. 
Avarice and self-satisfaction, following their wide popularity, 
soon led the Franciscans into quarrels with the other religious 
Orders and with the lecturers of the Universities and the 
secular clergy. These looked upon the 'Mendicants' as inter- 
lopers, trying to thieve congregations, fees, and revenues to 
which they had no right. 

' None of the Faithful ', says a contemporary Benedictine 
sourly, 'believe they can be saved unless they are under the 
direction of the Preachers or Minorites.' The power of the 
Franciscans, as of the Dominicans, was encouraged by the 
majority of Popes, who, like Innocent III, recognized in their 
enthusiasm a new weapon with which to defend Rome from 
accusations of worldliness and corruption. In return for papal 
sympathy and support the Friars became Rome's most ardent 
champions, and in defence of a system rather than in devotion to 
an ideal of life they deteriorated and accepted the ordinary 
religious standard of their day. 

Once more a wave of reform had swept into the mediaeval 



222 The Faith of the Middle Ages 

Church in a cleansing flood, only to be lost in the ebb tide of 
reaction. Yet this ultimate failure did not mean that the force 
of the wave was spent in vain. St; Francis could not stem the 
corruption of the thirteenth century; but his simple sincerity 
could reveal again to mankind an almost-forgotten truth that the 
road to the love of God is the love of humanity. 

'The Benedictine Order was the retreat from the World, the 
Franciscan the return to it.' These words show that the 
mediaeval mind, with its suspicion and dread of human nature, 
was undergoing transformation. Already it showed a gleam 
of that more modern spirit that traces something of the divine in 
every work of God, and therefore does not feel distrust but 
sympathy and interest. 

To St. Augustine the way to the Civitas Dei had been a 
precipitous and narrow road for each human soul, encompassed 
by legions of evil in its struggle for salvation. To St. Francis 
it was a pathway, steep indeed and rough, but bright with 
flowers, and so lit by the joy of serving others that the pilgrim 
scarce realized his feet were bleeding from the stones. 

In the dungeons of Perugia the mirth of Francis Bernadone 
had been called by his companions 'craziness', and to those 
whose eyes read evil rather than good in this world his message 
still borders on madness. Yet the Saint of Assisi has had his 
followers in all ages since his death, distinguished not necessarily 
by the Grey Friar's robe, but by their silent spending of them- 
selves for others and their joyous belief in God and man. 

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 

Roger Bacon 1214-92 

Peter Abelard ... 1079-1142 

Thomas Aquinas 1227-74 

Arnold of Brescia (burned) 1155 

St. Dominic 1170-1221 

The Albigensian Crusade 1209 

Louis VIII of France 1223-6 

St. Francis of Assisi 1 182-1226 

Foundation of Franciscan Order 1223 



XVII 

FRANCE UNDER TWO STRONG KINGS 

We have seen that Philip Augustus laid the foundations of 
a strong French monarchy, but his death was followed by feudal 
reaction, the nobles struggling in every way by fraud or violence 
to recover the independence that they had lost. 

Louis VIII, the new king, in order to checkmate their designs, 
determined to divide his lands amongst his sons, all the younger 
paying allegiance to the eldest, but each directly responsible 
for the administration of his own province. Perhaps at the 
time this was the most obvious means of ruling in the interests 
of the crown a kingdom that, in its rapid absorption of 
Normandy, Anjou, Poitou, and Toulouse, had outrun the 
central government. Yet it was in truth a short-sighted policy 
for, since these ' appanages ', or royal fiefs, were hereditary, 
they ended by replacing the old feudal nobility with a new, the 
more arrogant in its ambitions because it could claim kinship 
with the House of Capet. 

Louis VIII did not live long enough to put his plan into 
execution ; and Louis IX, a boy of twelve at the time of his 
accession, though accepting later the provision made for his 
younger brothers in his father's will, was enabled, partly by the 
administrative ability of his mother and guardian, Queen Blanche, 
partly by his own personality, to maintain his supremacy un- 
diminished. On one occasion his brother, the Count of Anjou, 
had imprisoned a knight, in anger that the man should have 
dared to appeal to the king's court against a judicial decision he 
himself had given. ' I will have but one king in France,' 
exclaimed Louis when he heard, and ordered the knight to be 
released and that both he and the count should bring their case 
to Paris for royal judgement. 

Heavy penalties were also inflicted by Louis on any promoters 



224 France under Two Strong Kings 

of private warfare, while the baronage was restricted in its 
right to coin money. At this time eighty nobles besides the 
King are said to have possessed their own mints. Louis, who 
knew the feudal coinage was freely debased, forbade its circula- 
tion except in the province where it had been minted ; while his 
own money, which was of far higher value, was made current 
everywhere. Men and women naturally prefer good coins to 
bad in exchange for merchandise ; and so the King hoped that 
the debased money, when restricted in use, would gradually be 
driven out of existence. 

If Louis believed in his rights as an absolute king, he had an 
equally high conception of the duties that such rights involved. 
'Make thyself beloved by thy people,' he said to his son, 'for 
I would rather that a Scotchman came from Scotland and 
governed my subjects well and equitably than that thou shouldst 
govern them badly.' 

Royal justice, like the coinage, must be superior to any other 
justice ; and so the chroniclers tell us that Louis selected as his 
bailiffs and seneschals those who were 'loyal and wise, of upright 
conduct and good reputation, above all, men with clean hands '. 
Knowing the ease with which even well-meaning officials could 
be corrupted by money and honours, he ordered his deputies 
neither to receive nor give presents, while he warned his judges 
always to lean rather to the side of the poor than of the rich in 
a case of law until evidence revealed the truth. 

Philip Augustus had followed justice because he believed that 
it paid, and his subjects had feared and respected him. His 
grandson, with his keen sense of honour, shrank from injustice as 
something unclean ; and we are told that the people ' loved him 
as men love God and the Saints'. 

Like nearly all the kings of France, Louis was a devout son 
of the Church, and it was under his protection that Innocent IV 
resided safely at Lyons when Frederick II had driven him from 
Rome. 1 Nevertheless the King's sincere love of the Faith, 
that later won him canonization as a Saint, never hindered his 
determination that he would be master of all his subjects, 

1 See p. 194. 



Louis IX 225 

both lay and ecclesiastical. If the clergy sinned after the manner 
of laymen he was firm that they should be tried in the lay courts ; 
and while his contemporary, Henry III of England, remained 
a feeble victim of papal encroachments, Louis boldly declared, 
' It is unheard of that the Holy See, when it is in need, should 
impose subsidies on the Church of France, and levy those contri- 
butions on temporal goods that can only be imposed by the King.' 

No storm of protest was aroused, for the Papacy in its bitter 
struggle with the Empire was largly dependent on French 
support; while Louis's transparent purity of motive in main- 
taining his supremacy disarmed indignation. An Italian friar, who 
saw him humbly sharing the meal of some Franciscan brethren, 
described him as • more monk than king'. This assumption was 
at first sight borne out by his daily life : his simple diet and 
love of sombre clothes ; his habit of rising from his bed at 
midnight and in the early mornings to share in the services of 
the Church ; his hatred of oaths, lying, and idle gossip ; his 
almost reckless charity ; the eager help he offered in nursing 
the sick amongst his Paris slums and in washing the feet of the 
most repulsive beggars who crowded at his gate. ' He was frail 
and slender/ says the same Italian, - with an angelic expression, 
and dove's eyes full of grace.' 

Perhaps, if Louis had not been called to the life of a king, he 
might have become a friar ; but living in the world he loved his 
wife and children, and would sometimes tease the former by 
protesting, when she complained how poorly he dressed, that if 
he put on gaudy clothes to please her she also must go in drab 
attire to please him. 

Those of his subjects who saw Louis on the battle-field 
describe him as 'the finest knight ever seen', and recount 
tales of their difficulty in restraining his hot courage, that would 
carry him into the fiercest hand-to-hand conflict without any 
thought of personal danger. Yet this king was a lover of 
peace in his heart. He wished to be friends with all his Christian 
neighbours, and, well content with the lands that already be- 
longed to the French crown, he negotiated a treaty by which he 
recognized English claims to the Diichy of Guienne. Less 

2627 Q 



226 France under Two Strong Kings 

successful was his effort to act as mediator between popes and 
emperors ; but if he could not secure peace he determined at 
least to remain as neutral in the struggle as possible, refusing 
the imperial crown when the Pope deposed Frederick II. Nor 
would he reap advantage out of the anarchy that followed on that 
emperor's death. 

War between Christians was hateful to Louis because it 
prevented any combined action against the Turks; for in him, as 
in Innocent III, burned the old crusading spirit that had never 
quite died out in France. 

At the beginning of the thirteenth century a French peasant 
lad, Stephen, had preached a new crusade, saying that God had 
told him in a vision that it was left for Christian children to 
succeed where their elders had failed in recovering the Holy 
Sepulchre. Thousands of boys and girls, some of them only 
twelve or thirteen years of age, collected at Marseilles in eager 
response to this message. They expected that a pathway would 
be opened to them across the sea as in the days of Moses and 
the Chosen People, and when they had waited for some time in 
vain for this miracle, they allowed themselves to be entrapped by 
false merchants, who, though Christian in name, would allow 
nothing to stand in the way of the gold that they coveted. 
Enticed on board ship, disarmed, bound, and manacled, the 
unfortunate young crusaders were sold in the market-places of 
Egypt and Syria to become the slaves of the Moslems whom 
they had hoped to conquer. 

When he had first heard of the Children's Crusade, 
Innocent III had exclaimed, 'The children shame us indeed!' and 
St. Louis, the inheritor of their spirit, felt that his kingship would 
be shamed unless he used his power and influence to convert 
and overthrow the Turk. 

One of his subjects, who loved him, the Sieur de Joinville, 
has left a graphic personal account of the expedition undertaken 
against Egypt. From Cyprus, the head-quarters of the crusaders, 
a fleet of some one thousand eight hundred vessels, great and 
small, sailed to Damietta, at the mouth of the Nile; and Louis, 
seeing his ensign borne ashore, would not be restrained, but 



The Seventh Crusade 227 

leaped himself into the water, lance in hand, shouting his battle- 
cry of ' Mont-joie St. Denys ! * 

Before the impetuosity of an army inspired by this zeal the town 
soon fell ; but the mediaeval mind had reckoned little with diffi- 
culties of climate, and soon the unhealthy mists that hung over 
the delta of the Nile were decimating the Christian ranks with 
fever and dysentery, while many of the best troops perished in 
unimportant skirmishes into which daring rather than a wise 
judgement had led them. The advance once checked became 
a retreat, the retreat a rout ; and St. Louis, refusing to desert 
his rear-guard, was taken prisoner by the Mahometans. 

The disaster was complete, for only on the surrender of 
Damietta and the payment of a huge ransom was the King 
released, but his patience and chivalry redeemed his failure 
from all stain of ignominy. Instead of returning to France he 
sailed to the Holy Land ; where, though Jerusalem had again 
fallen to the Turks after Frederick It's temporary possession of 
it, yet a strip of seaboard, including the port of Acre, remained 
to the Christians. 

Louis believed that, unless he persevered in fulfilling his vow, 
crusaders of a lesser rank would lose their hope and courage, and 
so, enfeebled by disease, he stayed for three years in Palestine, 
until the death of his mother, Queen Blanche, whom he had left 
as regent in France, compelled him to return home. Joinville 
relates how on this voyage, because of the fierceness of the 
storm, the sailors would have put the King ashore at Cyprus, 
but Louis feared a panic amongst the terrified troops if he 
agreed. ' There is none ', he said, ' that does not love his life 
as much as I love mine, and these perad venture would never 
return to their own land. Therefore I like better to place my 
own person ... in God's hands than to do this harm to the 
many people who are here.' 

Louis re ached France in safety, but, chafing at his crusading 
failures, he once more took the Cross, against the advice of his 
barons, in 12^2. It was his aim to regain Tunis, and so to free 
part of North Africa at least from Mahometan rule. To this task 
he brought his old religious enthusiasm, but France was weary of 

Q 2 



228 France under Two Strong Kings 

crusades, and many of those who had fought willingly in Syria 
and Egypt now refused to follow him, leaving the greater part of 
his army to be composed of mercenaries, tempted onlybytheir pay. 

Landing near Carthage, the crusaders soon found themselves 
outnumbered, and were blockaded by their foes amid the ruins 
of the town. Pestilence swept the crowded, insanitary camp, 
and one of the first to fall a victim was the delicate king. ' Lord, 
have pity on Thy people whom I have led here. Send them to 
their homes in safety. Let them not fall into the hands of their 
enemies, nor let them be forced to deny Thy Holy Name.' 

The dying words of the saint are characteristic of his love of 
the Faith and of his people ; and everywhere in the camp and 
in France, when the news of his death reached her, there was 
mourning for this king among kings who had sacrificed his life 
for his ideals. Yet the flame of enthusiasm he had tried to keep 
alight quickly flickered out into the darkness, and his son and 
successor, Philip III, made a truce with the Sultan of Tunis that 
enabled him to withdraw his army and embark for horned) The 
only person really annoyed by this arrangement was the English 
prince Edward, afterwards Edward I, who arrived on the scene 
just at the time of St. Louis's death, thirsting for a campaign and 
military glory ; but owing to the general indifference he was 
forced to give up the idea of war in Africa and continue his 
journey alone to the Holy Land?) 

Philip III of France has left little mark on history. He 
stands, with the title of 'the Rash', between two kings of dominant 
personality — his father, canonized as a saint before the century 
had closed, and his son Philip IV, 'the Fair', anything but 
a saint in his hard, unscrupulous dealings with the world, but yet 
one of the strongest rulers that France has known. 

Philip IV was only seventeen when he became king. From 
his nickname 'le Bel' it is obvious that he was handsome, but 
no kindly Joinville has left a record of his personal life and 
character. We can only draw our conclusions from his acts, 
and these show him ruthless in his ambitions, mean, and 
vindictive. 

In his dealings with the Papacy Philip's conduct stands con- 



The Sicilian Vespers 229 

trasted with the usual affectionate reverence of his predecessors ; 
but this contrast is partly accounted for by the fact that, at the end 
of the quarrel between Empire and Papacy, Rome found herself 
regarding France from a very changed standpoint to the early 
days of that encounter. 

Ever since the time of Gregory VII the Hohenstaufen emperors 
had loomed like a thunder-cloud on the papal horizon, but with the 
execution of Conradin, the last of the royal line, 1 this threatening 
atmosphere had cleared. The Empire fell a prey to civil war 
during the Great Interregnum, that is, during the seventeen 
years when English, Spanish, and German princes contended 
without any decisive results for the imperial crown. Count 
Rudolf of Habsburg, who at last emerged triumphant, had 
learned at least one diplomatic lesson, that if he wished to have 
a free hand in Germany he could do so best as the friend of the 
Pope, not as his enemy. One of his earliest acts was to ratify 
a concordat with Rome in which he resigned all those imperial 
claims to the lands belonging to the Holy See that Frederick II 
had put forward. He also agreed to acknowledge Count 
Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis and the Pope's chief ally, 
as Count of Provence and King of Naples and Sicily. 

Italy was thus freed from German intervention, but her cities 
remained torn by the factions of Guelfs and Ghibellines ; and the 
iron hand of the French lay as heavily on ' The Kingdom ' as 
ever the Hohenstaufen's despotic sceptre. The Sicilians, rest- 
less under the yoke, began to mourn Frederick, who, whatever 
his sins, had been born and bred in the south, the son of 
a southern princess; while these French were cruel with the 
indifferent ferocity of strangers who despised those whom they 
oppressed. 

Out of the sullen hatred of the multitude, stirred of a sudden 
to white heat by the assault of a French soldier on a woman of 
Palermo, sprang the 'Sicilian Vespers', the rebellion and 
massacre of an Easter Monday night, when more than four 
thousand of the hated strangers, men, women, and children, 
were put to death and their bodies flung into an open pit. 

1 See p. 195. 



230 France under Two Strong Kings 

Charles of Anjou prepared a fitting revenge for this insult to his 
race, a revenge that he intended to exact to the uttermost 
farthing, for he had little of his brother's sense of justice and 
tender heart; but while he made his preparations a Spanish 
prince, Peter III of Aragon, came to the rescue of the Sicilians 
with a large fleet. A fierce war followed, but in spite of defeats, 
treaties that would have sacrificed her to the interests of kings, 
and continuous papal threats, Sicily clung staunch to her new 
ally, gaining at last as a recognized Aragonese possession 
a triumphant independence of the Angevin kingdom of Naples. 

Rome, under a pope who was merely the puppet of Charles 
of Anjou, had hurled anathemas at Peter III; but his successors 
of more independent mind envied the Sicilians. It was of little 
use for Rome to throw off Hohenstaufen chains if she must 
rivet in their stead those of the French House of Anjou. This 
was the fear that made her look with cold suspicion on her once 
well-beloved sons the kings of France, whose relations of the 
blood-royal were also kings of Naples. 

In 1294 Pope Boniface VIII, sometimes called 'the last of the 
mediaeval Popes ' because any hopes of realizing the world-wide 
ambitions of a Hildebrand or of an Innocent III died with him, 
was elected to the Chair of St. Peter. His jubilee, held at 
Rome in 1300 to celebrate the new century, was of a spendour 
to dazzle the thousands of pilgrims from all parts of Europe 
who poured their offerings into his coffers ; but its glamour was 
delusive. 

Already he had suffered rebuffs in encounters with the kings 
of England and France : for, when he published a Bull, Clericis 
Laicos, that forbade the clergy to pay taxes any longer to 
a lay ruler, Edward I at once condemned the English Church 
to outlawry, until from fear of the wholesale robbery of their 
lands and goods his bishops consented to a compromise that 
made the Bull a dead letter. Philip IV of France, on his part, 
was even more violent, for he retaliated by ordering his subjects 
to send no more contributions to Rome of any kind. 

A wiser man than Boniface might have realized from his 
failures that the growth of nationality was proving too strong for 



Boniface VIII 231 

any theories of world-government, whether papal or imperial ; 
but, old and stubborn, he could not set aside his Hildebrandine 
ideals. When one of his legates, a Frenchman, embarked on 
a dispute with Philip IV, Boniface told him to meet the King 
with open defiance, upon which Philip immediately ordered the 
ecclesiastic's arrest, and that his archbishop should degrade 
him from his office. Boniface then fulminated threats of 
excommunication and deposition, to which the French king 
replied by an act of open violence. 

The agent he chose to inflict this insult was a certain Nogaret, 
grandson of an Albigensian heretic who had been burned at the 
stake, and this man joined himself to some of the nobles of the 
Roman Campagna, who had equally little reverence for the Head 
of Christendom. Heavily armed, they appeared in the village 
of Anagni, where Boniface VIII was staying, and demanded to 
see him. Outside in the street their men-at-arms stood shouting 
' : Death to the Pope ! ' 

Boniface could hear them from his audience-chamber, but 
though he was eighty-six his courage did not fail him. Clad in 
his full pontifical robes, his cross in one hand, his keys of St. 
Peter in the other, he received the intruders. Nogaret roughly 
demanded his abdication. ' Here is my head ! Here is my 
neck ! ' he replied. ' Betrayed like Jesus Christ, if I must die 
like Him I will at least die Pope.' At this one of the Roman 
nobles struck him across the face with his mailed glove, felling 
him to the ground, and would have killed him had not Nogaret 
interfered. It was the Provencal's mission to intimidate rather 
than to murder, and while he argued with the Italians a hostile 
crowd assembled to rescue their Vicar, and the French agents 
were forced to fly. 

The proud old man survived the indignities he had suffered 
only by a few weeks, and his successor, having dared to excom- 
municate those who took part in the scene at Anagni, died also 
with mysterious suddenness. No definite suspicion attached to 
Philip IV, but rumour whispered the fatal word ' poison ', and 
the conclave of cardinals spent ten uneasy months in trying to 
find a new pope. At last a choice emerged from the conclave, 



232 France under Two Strong Kings 

the Archbishop of Bordeaux, with the title of Clement V. He 
was crowned at Lyons, and never ventured into Italy, choosing 
as his residence the city of Avignon in Provence. 

Here for just over seventy years, during the ' Babylonish 
Captivity ' as it was usually called, a succession of popes reigned 
under French influence, having exchanged the imperial yoke 
for one still more binding. 

Philip IV at once made use of this French Head of Christen- 
dom to condemn the Order of Templars, which from their 
powerful organization and extensive revenues he had long 
regarded with dislike and envy. 

The crusades at an end, the Templars had outlived the object 
of their foundation ; while the self-denial imposed upon them 
and their roving, uncloistered life, exposed them to constant 
temptations to which many of the less spiritual succumbed. 
Thus their suppression was probably wise ; but Philip IV, 
a pitiless enemy, did not merely suppress, he pursued the 
Knights of the Temple with vindictive cruelty. Hundreds were 
thrown into dungeons, and there tortured into confessing crimes, 
the committal of which they afterwards recanted in vain ; while 
their principal officers were burned at the stake in the market- 
places of the large French towns. By papal commands the 
revenues of the Templars passed into the exchequer of the 
Knights of St. John, who still guarded one of the outposts of 
Christendom, the island of Rhodes ; but the French king took 
care that a substantial part of the money confiscated in France 
went instead to his own treasury. 

Philip was indeed in serious financial straits, for the revenues 
of the royal demesnes were proving quite inadequate to meet the 
expenses of a government that now extended its sway over the 
length and breadth of France. Philip tried many expedients 
to meet the deficiency, most of them bad. Such were the frequent 
debasement of the coinage and the imposition of the gabelle, that 
is of a tax on the sale of goods. This was justly hated because 
instead of encouraging commerce it penalized industry by adding 
to the price of nearly every commodity put on the market. 
Thus a gabelle imposed on grain would mean that a man must 



Government of Philip IV 233 

pay a tax on it three times over, first in the form of grain, then 
of flour, and finally as bread. 

Worse even than the gabelle was Philip's method of ' farming ' 
the taxes, that is, of selling the right to collect them to some 
speculator, who would make himself responsible to the govern- 
ment for a round sum, and then squeeze what extra money he 
could out of the unfortunate populace in order to repay his 
efforts. 

It is not, then, for any improved financial administration that 
the reign of Philip IV is worthy of praise. His was no original 
genius, but rather a practical ability for developing the schemes 
invented by his predecessors. Like them he hated and distrusted 
his insubordinate baronage ; and, seeking to impose his fierce 
will upon them, turned for advice and obedience to men of lesser 
rank, employing as the main instrument of his government the 
lawyer class that Philip Augustus and Louis IX had introduced 
in limited numbers amongst the feudal office-holders at their 
court. 

The employment of trained workers in the place of amateurs 
resulted in improved administration, so it followed that under 
Philip IV the French government began to take a definitely 
modern stamp and became divided into separate departments 
for considering different kinds of work. Thus it was the dut}' 
of the Conseil du Rot, or King's Council, to give the Sovereign 
advice ; of the Chambre des Comptes, or Chamber of Finance, 
to deal with financial questions ; of the Parlement, or chief 
judicial court, to sit in Paris for two months at least twice a year 
to hold assizes and give judgements. 

The Parlement de Paris resembles the English Parliament 
somewhat in name ; but except for a right, later acquired, of 
registering royal edicts, its work was entirely judicial, not legis- 
lative. The body in France that most nearly corresponded to 
the English Parliament was the ' States-General ', composed of 
representatives of the three 'Estates' or classes, of clergy, nobles, 
and citizens. The peasants of France, who composed the 
greater part of her population, were not represented at all. 

Philip IV summoned the 'States-General' several times to 



234 France under Two Strong Kings 

approve his suggestions; but, unlike the 'Model Parliament' 
called by his English contemporary Edward I for similar reasons, 
it never developed into a legislative assembly that could act 
as a competent check upon royal tyranny, but existed merely 
as it seemed to accept responsibility for its ruler's laws and 
financial demands, whether good or bad. Its weakness arose 
partly from the fact that it often sat only for a day at a time and 
so had no leisure to discuss the measures laid before it, but still 
more owing to the class selfishness that prevented the three 
classes from combining to insist on reforms before they would 
vote any taxes. 

This was very unfortunate for France, since on the one occasion 
that the nobles and burghers actually did combine in refusing 
to submit to an especially obnoxious gabelle that hit both their 
pockets, Philip IV was forced to yield, reluctantly enough because 
the loss of the money led to his failure in a war in Flanders. 

Flanders was a fief of the French crown, and because its 
count, his tenant-in-chief, had dared to rebel against him, Philip 
had flung him into prison and declared his lands confiscated. 
Then with his queen he had ridden north to visit this territory 
now owning direct allegiance to himself, in the belief that he had 
nothing to do but to give orders to its inhabitants and await their 
immediate fulfilment. The chroniclers tell us that the royal 
pair "were overcome with astonishment at the display of fine 
clothes and jewels made by the burghers of Bruges to do them 
honour. 

' I thought that there was only one Queen in France/ 
exclaimed Philip's consort discontentedly. 'Here I see at least 
six hundred.' ' The King, always with an eye to the main 
chance, regarded the brilliant throng more philosophically. 
They seemed to him very suitable subjects for taxation ; but 
the Flemings had won their wealth by a sturdy independence 
of spirit both in the market-place and on the high seas : they 
had been indifferent to the fate of their count, but at any time 
preferred the risks of rebellion to being plucked like geese by the 
King of France. 

On the field of Courtrai, where Philip brought his army to 



Philip IV 235 

punish their insolence, the Flemish burghers taught Europe, as 
their Milanese fellows had at Legnano in the twelfth century, 
that citizen levies could hold their own against heavily-armed 
feudal troops; andthough the King's careful generalship redeemed 
this defeat two years later, he found the victory he obtained barren 
of fruit. Within a few weeks of the burghers' apparent collapse 
yet another citizen army had rallied to attack the royal camp, 
and Philip, declaring angrily that 'it rained Flemings', was 
driven to conclude a peace. 

Besides hating the independence of the Flemings, Philip IV 
grudged the English supremacy over the Duchy of Guienne that 
his grandfather had so willingly acknowledged. To his jealous 
eyes it ran its wedge like an alien dagger into the heart of his 
kingdom ; and watching his opportunity until Edward I was 
involved in wars with Wales and Scotland, Philip crossed the 
borders of the Duchy, and by force or craft obtained control of 
the greater number of its fortresses. There is little doubt that 
had he lived he would gradually have absorbed the whole of the 
southern provinces ; but when only forty-six he died, mourned 
by few of his subjects, and yet one of the kings who had set his 
stamp with the most lasting results upon the government of 
France. 

Supplementary Dates, For Chronological Summary , see pp. 368-73. 

The Children's Crusade 1212 

Philip III of France 1270-85 

Edward I of England 1272-1307 

Clement V 1305-14 

Battle of Courtrai . 1302 



XVIII 

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

During fourteen years, from 131410 1328, three sons of Philip 
IV reigned in rapid succession ; but with the death of the last 
the main line of the House of Capet came to an end, and the 
crown passed to his nephew and namesake Philip of Valois. 1 
The latter declared that his claims were based on a clause of 
the old Salic Law 2 forbidding a woman to inherit landed 
property, because as it happened Philip IV had left a daughter 
Isabel, who had married Edward II of England, and their son 
Edward III loudly protested that his right to the throne of 
France was stronger than that of the Valois. The Salic Law, 
Edward maintained, might prevent a woman from succeeding 
to the throne, but there was nothing in this restriction to forbid 
the inheritance passing to her male heirs. 

The question of the Salic Law is important because its 
different interpretations were the immediate excuse for opening 
hostilities between England and France in that long and weary 
struggle called the 'Hundred Years' War'. There were of 
course other and far deeper reasons. One of these reasons 
was that English kings had never forgotten or forgiven John's 
expulsion from Normandy. They wanted to avenge this igno- 
minious defeat and also Philip IV's encroachments in the Duchy 
of Guienne, that, united to his policy of supporting the Scottish 
chieftains in their war of independence, had been a steady 
source of disaster to England since the beginning of the four- 
teenth century. 

Because of his failure in Scotland and the revolts of his 
turbulent barons Edward II was murdered ; and Edward III, 

1 See Genealogical Table, p. 378. " See p. 55. 



Causes of the Hundred Years' War 237 

taking warning from his father's fate, welcomed the war with 
France, not merely in the hope of revenge and glory, but still 
more in order to find an occupation for the hot English blood 
that might otherwise in the course of its embittered feuds 
murder him. 

He rode forth to battle, the hero of his court and of the 
chivalry of England ; but no less, as it happened, the champion 
of her middle classes, who cheerfully put their hands in their 
pockets to pay for his first campaigns. The reason of their 
enthusiasm for this war was that Philip of Valois, in order 
to annoy his rival, had commanded his Flemish subjects to 
trade no longer with the English. Now English sheep were 
the best in Europe (so valuable that their export was forbidden 
lest another nation should obtain the breed), and English wool 
was the raw material of all others on which Flanders depended 
for the wealth and prosperity gained by her looms and factories. 
Before this time English kings had encouraged Flemish trade, 
establishing ' Staple ' markets in certain towns under their 
protection, where merchants of both countries could meet and 
bargain over their wares. Wishing to retaliate on Philip VI, 
however, Edward III stopped the export of wool, though at 
the same time he offered good terms and advantages to any 
of the manufacturers of Bruges and Ghent who might care to 
settle in Norfolk or on the East Coast and set up factories there 
as English subjects. 

Such a suggestion could not satisfy the Flemish national 
spirit, and in the large towns discontent with the French king 
grew daily. At last one of the popular leaders, Jacob van 
Artevelde, ' the Brewer of Ghent ', began to rouse his country- 
men by inflammatory speeches. 'He showed them', says the 
chronicler, ' that they could not live without the King of Eng- 
land ' ; and his many commercial arguments he strengthened 
with others intended to win those who might hesitate to break 
their oath of allegiance, assuring them that Edward III was 
in truth by right of birth King of France. 

Rebellion sprang up on all sides in response ; and when, 
in 1338, Edward III actually embarked on the war, he had 



238 The Hundred Years' War 

behind him not only the English wool-farmers, but also the 
majority of Flemish merchants and artisans, alike convinced 
that his victory would open Flemish markets to trade across 
the Channel. 

The Hundred Years' War falls into two distinct periods : 
the first, the contest waged by the Angevin Edward III against 
the House of Valois, a struggle that lasted until 1375; the 
second, a similar effort begun by the Lancastrian Kings of 
England in 1415 after a time of almost suspended hostilities 
under Richard II. In each period there is the same switchback 
course to the campaigns, as they rise towards a high-water mark 
of English successes only to sink away to final French 
achievement. 

The first ot the great English victories was fittingly a naval 
battle, destined to avenge long years during which French 
raiders had harried the south coast, penetrated up the Solent, 
and even set fire to large towns like Southampton. In June 
1340, near the entrance to the port of Sluys, some two hundred 
English vessels of all makes and sizes came upon the French 
fleet, drawn up in four lines closely chained together so as to 
form a kind of bulwark to the harbour. On the decks of the 
tall ships, the turrets of which were piled with stones and other 
missiles, were hundreds of Genoese archers ; but the English 
bowmen at this time had no match in Europe for long-distance 
accuracy and steadiness, and the whistling fire of their arrows 
soon drove their hired rivals into hiding and enabled the 
English men-at-arms to board the vessels opposite them almost 
unopposed. 

From this moment panic set in along the French lines, and 
the greater number of ships, unable to escape because of the 
chains that bound them together, were sunk at anchor, with, 
according to the chroniclers, twenty-five thousand of their crews 
and fighting-material. 

The English were now masters of the Channel, and Edward 
III was enabled to transplant an army to Flanders, but no 
triumph in any way corresponding to the victory of Sluys 
rewarded his efforts in this field of warfare. The campaign 



Battle of Creci 239 

became a tedious affair of sieges ; and the Flemings, cooling 
from their first sympathies, came to dislike the English and 
to accuse Jacob van Artevelde of supplying Edward III with 
money, merely in order to forward his personal ambitions. 
This charge the Flemish leader stoutly denied, but when, 
hearing the people of Ghent hooting him in the street outside 
his house, he stepped out on to the balcony and tried to clear 
himself, the mob surged forward, and, refusing to listen to a 
word, broke in through the barred doors and murdered him. 
This was ill news for Edward III, but angry though he was 
at the fate of his ally, he had neither sufficient men nor money 
to exact vengeance. Instead he himself determined to try 
a new theatre of war, for, as well as his army in Flanders, 
he had other forces fighting the French in Normandy and 
Guienne. 

Edward landed in Normandy ; and at Creci, to the north of 
the Somme, as he marched towards Calais, he was overtaken 
by Philip of Valois in command of a very large but undisciplined 
force. 

' You must know ', says Froissart, the famous chronicler of 
this first period of the Hundred Years' War, ' that the French 
troops did not advance in any particular order, and that as soon 
as their King came in sight of the English his blood began to 
boil, and he cried out to his Marshals, " Order the Genoese 
forward and begin the battle in the name of God and St. Denys ! " ' 

These Genoese were archers, who had already marched on 
foot so far and at such a pace that they were exhausted ; and 
when, against their will, they sullenly advanced, their bows that 
were wet from a thunderstorm proved slack and untrue. The 
sun also, that had just emerged from behind a cloud, shone in 
their eyes and dazzled them. Silently the English bowmen 
waited as they drew near, shouting hoarsely, and then of a 
sudden poured into the weary ranks such a multitude of arrows 
that' ' it seemed as though it snowed '. 

The Genoese, utterly disheartened, broke and fled ; at which 
the French king, choking with rage, cried, ' Kill me this rabble 
that cumbers our road without any reason ' ; but the English 



240 The Hundred Years' War 

fire never ceased ; and the French knights and men-at-arms 
that came to take the place of the Genoese and rode them 
underfoot fell in their turn with the shafts piercing through the 
joints of their heavy armour. 

Again, at Creci it was made evident to Europe that the old 
feudal order of battle was passing away. Victory fell not to 
the knight armoured with his horse like a slowly-moving turret, 
but to the clear-eyed, leather-clad bowman, or the foot-soldier 
quick with his knife or spear. The French fought gallantly 
at Creci, and none more fiercely than Philip of Valois, whose 
horse was killed beneath him ; but courage cannot wipe out 
bad generalship, and when at last he consented to retreat he 
left eleven princes of the blood-royal and over a thousand of 
his knights stretched on the battle-field. 

The defeat of Creci took from Calais any hope of French 
succour, and in the following year after a prolonged siege it 
surrendered to the English and became the most cherished of 
all their possessions across the seas. ' The Commons of 
England ', wrote Froissart, ' love Calais more than any town 
in the world, for they say that as long as they are masters of 
Calais they hold the keys of France at their girdle.' 

Death at the battle of Creci, decked in all the panoply of 
mediaeval warfare, had taken its toll of the chivalry of France and 
England. Now, in an open and ghastly form, indifferent alike to 
race or creed, it stalked across Europe, visiting palace and castle 
but sweeping with a still more ruthless scythe the slum and the 
hovel. Somewhere in the far East the ' Black Death ', as it was 
later called, had its origin, and wherever it passed, moving 
westward, villages, nay, even towns, disappeared. 

More than thirteen million people are said to have perished 
in China, India was almost depopulated, and at last in 1347 
Europe also was smitten. Very swift was the blow, for many 
victims of the plague died in a few hours, the majority within 
five days ; and contemporary writers tell us of ships, that left 
an eastern harbour with their full complement of crew, found 
drifting in the Mediterranean a few weeks later without a 
living soul on board to take the helm ; of towns where the dead 



The Black Death 241 

were so many that there was none to bury them ; of villages 
where the peasants fell like cattle in the fields and by the 
wayside unnoticed. 

In Italy, in France, in England, there is the same record of 
misery and terror. Boccaccio, the Italian writer, describes in 
his book, the Decameron, how the wealthy nobles and maidens 
of Florence fled from the plague-stricken town to a villa without 
the walls, there to pass their days in telling one another tales. 
These tales have made Boccaccio famous as the first great 
European novelist ; but in reality not many even of the wealthy 
could keep beyond the range of infection, and Boccaccio himself 
says elsewhere 'these who first set the example of forsaking 
others languished where there was no one to take pity on them '. 

Neither courage, nor devotion, nor selfishness could avail 
against the dread scourge ; though like all diseases its ravages 
were most virulent where small dwellings were crowded together 
or where dirt and insanitary conditions prevailed. 'They fell 
sick by thousands,' says Boccaccio of the poorer classes, ' and 
having no one whatever to attend them, most of them died.' 
According to a doctor in the south of France, ' the number of 
those swept away was greater than those left alive.' In the once 
thriving port of Marseilles 'so many died that it remained like 
an uninhabited place'. Another French writer, speaking of 
Paris, says, ' there was so great a mortality of people of both 
sexes . . . that they could hardly be buried.' ' There was no city, 
nor town, nor hamlet,' writes an Englishman of his own country, 
' nor even, save in rare instances, any house, in which this plague 
did not carry off the whole or the greater portion of the 
inhabitants.' 

One immediate result of the Black Death was to put a 
temporary stop to the war between England and France; for 
armies were reduced to a fraction of their former strength and 
rival kings forgot words like ' glory ' or ' conquest ' in terrified 
contemplation of an enemy against whom all their weapons were 
powerless. 

Other and more lasting effects were experienced everywhere, 
for town and village life was completely disorganized : magis- 



242 The Hundred Years' War 

trates, city officials, priests, and doctors had perished in such 
numbers that it was difficult to replace them : criminals plundered 
deserted houses unchecked : the usually law-abiding, deprived 
of the guidance to which they had been accustomed, gave them- 
selves up to a dissolute life, trying to drown all thoughts of the 
past and future in any enjoyment they could find in the present. 
Work almost ceased : the looms stood idle, the ships remained 
without cargoes, the fields were neither reaped of the one harvest 
nor sown for the next. The peasants, when reproached, declared 
that the plague had been a sign of the end of the world and that 
therefore to labour was a waste of time. ' All things were 
dearer,' says a Frenchman : ' furniture, food, and merchandise oi 
all sorts doubled in price : servants would only work for higher 
wages.' 

In the years following the Black Death the labouring classes 
of Europe discovered for the first time their value. They were 
the necessary foundation to the scheme of mediaeval life, the 
base of the feudal pyramid ; and, since they were now few in 
number, masters began to compete for their services. Thus they 
were able to demand a better wage for their work and improved 
conditions ; but here the governments of the day, that ruled in 
the interests of the nobles and middle classes, stepped in, forbade 
wages to be raised, or villeins and serfs to leave their homes and 
seek better terms in another neighbourhood. The discontent of 
those held down wifh an iron hand, yet half awake to the possi- 
bilities of greater freedom, seethed towards revolution ; but few 
mediaeval kings chose to look below the surface of national life, 
and in the case of England Edward III was certainly not enough 
of a statesman to do so. 

In 1355 he renewed the war with France, hoping that by 
victories he would be able to fill his own purse from French 
ransoms and pillage as well as to drug the disordered popular 
mind at home with showy triumphs. His eldest son, Edward, 
the Black Prince, who had gained his spurs at Creci, landed at 
Bordeaux and marched through Guienne, the English armies 
like the French being mainly composed of ' companies ', that is, 
of hired troops under military captains, the terror of friends and 



Battle of Poitiers 243 

foes alike ; for with impartial ruthlessness they trampled down 
corn and vineyards as they passed, pillaged towns, and burned 
farms and villages. 

Philip of Valois was dead, but his son, John ' the Good ', had 
succeeded him, and earned his title, it must be supposed, by his 
punctilious regard for the laws of mediaeval chivalry. His 
reckless daring, extravagance, and rash generalship made him 
at any rate a very bad ruler according to modern standards. 
Froissart says that on the field of Poitiers, where the two armies 
met, ' King John on his part proved himself a good knight ; 
indeed, if the fourth of his people had behaved as well, the day 
would have been his own.' 

This is extremely doubtful, for the French, though far the 
larger force, were outmanoeuvred from the first. The Black 
Prince had the gift of generalship and disposed his army so that 
it was hidden amid the slopes of a thick vineyard, laying an 
ambush of skilled archers behind the shelter of a hedge. As 
King John's cavalry charged towards the only gap, in order to 
clear a road for their main army, they were mown down by a 
merciless fire at short range from the ambush ; while in the en- 
suing confusion English knights swept round on the French 
flank and put the foot-soldiers to flight. The Black Prince's 
victory was complete, for King John and his principal nobles 
were surrounded and taken prisoners after a fierce conflict in 
which for a long time they refused to surrender. ' They behaved 
themselves so loyally ', says Froissart, ' that their heirs to this day 
are honoured for their sake ' : and Prince Edward, waiting on 
his royal captive that night at dinner, awarded him the ' prize 
and garland ' of gallantry above all other combatants. 

Evil days followed in France, where her king's chivalry 
could not pay his enormous ransom nor those of his distinguished 
fellow prisoners. For this money merchants must sweat and 
save, and the peasants toil longer hours on starvation rations ; 
while the ' companies ', absolved by a truce from regular war- 
fare, exacted their daily bread at the sword-point when and 
where they chose. 

Famous captains, who were really infamous brigands, took 

r 2 



244 The Hundred Years' War 

their toll of sheep and corn and grapes ; and those farmers and 
labourers who refused, or could not give what they required, they 
flung alive on to bonfires, while they tortured and mutilated, 
their wives and families. Against such wickedness there was no 
protection either from the government or overlords ; indeed, the 
latter were as cruel as the brigand chiefs, extorting the very 
means of livelihood from their tenants and serfs to pay for the 
distractions of a court never more extravagant and pleasure- 
seeking than in this hour of national disaster. 

' Jacques Bonhomme,' the French noble would say mockingly 
of the peasant, ' has a broad back ... he will pull out his purse 
fast enough if he is beaten.' The day came, however, when 
Jacques Bonhomme, grown reckless in his misery, pulled out his 
knife instead, and, in the words of Froissart, became like a ' mad 
dog '. He had neither leaders nor any hope of reform, nothing 
but a seething desire for revenge ; and in the 'Jacquerie ', as the 
peasant rebellion of this date was called, he inflicted on the 
nobles and their families all the horrors that he himself, standing 
by helpless, had seen perpetrated on his own belongings. 
Castles were burned, their furniture and treasures looted and 
destroyed, their owners were roasted at slow fires, their wives 
and daughters violated, their children tortured and massacred. 

This is one of the most hideous scenes in French history, the 
darker because France in her blindness learned no lesson from 
it. The nobles, who soon gained the upper hand against these 
wild undisciplined hordes, exacted a vengeance in proportion to 
the crimes committed, and fixed the yoke of serfdom more surely 
than ever on the shoulders of Jacques Bonhomme. This was 
the only way, in their conception, to deal with such a mad dog ; 
but Jacques Bonhomme was in reality an outraged human being 
of flesh and blood like those who loathed and despised him ; 
and during centuries of tyranny his anger grew in force and 
bitterness until in the Revolution of 1789 it burst forth with 
a violence against both guilty and innocent that no power in 
France was strong enough to stem. 

The outrages of the Jacquerie unfortunately discredited real 
efforts at reform that had been initiated in Paris by the leader 



feienne Marcel 245 

of the middle classes, the Provost of Merchants, Etienne Marcel. 
This Marcel had demanded that the States-General should be 
called regularly twice a year, that the Dauphin Charles, 1 eldest 
son of King John, who was acting as regent during his father's 
imprisonment, should send away his favourites, and that instead 
of these fraudulent ministers a standing council of elected 
representatives should be set up to advise the crown. 
. To these and many other reforms the Dauphin pretended to 
yield under the pressure of public opinion ; but he soon broke 
all his promises and began to rule again as he chose. Marcel, 
roused Jo indignation, summoned his citizen levies, and, breaking 
into the Prince's palace, ordered his men-at-arms to seize two 
of the most hated ministers and drag them to the royal presence. 
1 Do that quickly for which you were brought,' he said to the 
soldiers ; whereupon they slew the favourites as they crouched 
at Charles's feet, their fingers clinging to his robe. 

This act of violence won for Etienne Marcel the undying 
hatred of the Dauphin and his court, and from this time the 
decline of his influence may be traced. In order to maintain 
his power the popular leader was driven to condone the excesses 
of the peasants, in their rebellion, that had shocked the whole 
of France, and to ally himself with Charles the Bad, King of 
Navarre, to whom he promised to deliver the keys of Paris in 
return for his support against the Dauphin. 

This was a fatal move, for Charles the Bad did not care at all 
for the interests of the middle classes : he only wished to gain 
some secret or advantage worth selling, and at once betrayed 
Etienne to his foes as soon as the Dauphin paid him a sufficient 
price. Then a trap was arranged, and Marcel killed in the 
gateway of Paris as he was about to open its strong bars to his 
treacherous ally. With his death all attempts at securing 
a more liberal and responsible government failed. 

The country, indeed, had sunk into the apathy of exhaustion ; 

1 The province of Dauphine, formerly an imperial fief, was acquired by the 
French crown in 1349, and became a regular ' appanage ' of the King's eldest 
son, conferring on him the title of ' Dauphin ', equivalent to the English title 
' Prince of Wales '. 



246 



The Hundred Years' War 



and two years later the Treaty of Bretigni, that represents the 
high-water mark of English power in France, was thankfully 
signed. In return for Edward Ill's surrender of his claim to 
the French throne, his right to the Duchy of Guienne as well as 



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to Calais and the country immediately round its walls was 
recognized, without any of the feudal obligations that had been 
such a fruitful source of trouble in old days. 

Peace now seemed possible for an indefinite period ; but, in 
truth, so long as two hostile nations divided France there was 



Battle of Navarette 247 

always the likelihood of fresh discord ; and the Dauphin, who 
had succeeded his father, King John, gently fanned the flames 
whenever he thought that the political wind blew to his advantage. 
From a timid, peevish youth,' one of the first to fly in terror from 
the field of Poitiers, he had developed into an astute politician, 
whose successful efforts to regain the lost territories of France 
earned him the title of ' Wise '. 

King Edward III and his son professed to despise this prince, 
who knew not how to wield a lance to any purpose ; but Charles, 
though feeble in body and a student rather than a soldier at 
heart, knew how to choose good captains to serve him in the 
field ; and one of these — the famous Bertrand du Guesclin, said 
to have been the ugliest knight and best fighter of his time — 
became the hero of many a battle against the English, first of 
all in France, and later in Spain. 

It was owing to the war in Spain that the English hold over 
the south of France was first shaken ; for the Black Prince, who 
had been created Duke of Guienne, unwisely listened to the 
exiled King of Castile, Pedro the Cruel, who came to Bordeaux 
begging his assistance against the usurper of his throne. This 
was his illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastamara. The English 
Prince at once declared that chivalry demanded that he should 
help the rightful king. Perhaps he remembered the strong 
bond that there had been between England and Castile ever 
since his great-grandfather, Edward I, had married the Spanish 
Eleanor : perhaps it was the promise of large sums of money 
that Pedro declared would reward the victorious troops : it is 
more likely, however, that the fiery soldier was moved by the news 
that Henry of Trastamara had gained his throne through French 
assistance and by the deeds of arms of the renowned Du 
Guesclin. 

In 1367 the English Prince crossed the Pyrenees, and at 
Navarette, near the river Ebro, his English archers and good 
generalship proved a match once more for his foes. Although 
the Spaniards were in vastly superior numbers they were mown 
down as they rashly charged to the attack; and Henry of 
Trastamara was driven from the field, leaving Du Guesclin 



248 The Hundred Years' War 

a prisoner and his brother Pedro once more able to assert his 
kingship. 

The real victors of Navarette now had cause to repent their 
alliance. Sickness, due to the heat of the climate and strange 
food, had thinned their ranks even more than the actual warfare : 
the money promised by Pedro the Cruel was not forthcoming ; 
indeed, that wily scoundrel, after atrocities committed against 
his helpless prisoners that fully bore out his nickname, had 
slipped away to secure his throne, while the Black Prince was 
in no position to pursue him, and could gain little satisfaction 
by correspondence. Sullen and weary, with the fever already 
lowering his vitality that was finally to cut short his life, Edward of 
Wales arrived in Bordeaux with his almost starving ' companies '. 
Because he had no money to pay them, he set them free to 
ravage southern France, while in order to fill his exchequer he 
imposed a tax on every hearth in Guienne. 

These measures proved him no statesman, whatever his 
generalship. In the early days of the Hundred Years' War 
Guienne had looked coldly on Paris, and appreciated a distant 
ruler who secured her liberty of action ; now, victim of a policy 
of mingled pillage and exactions, she soon came to regard her 
English rulers as foreign tyrants. Thus an appeal was made 
by the men of Guienne to Charles V, and he, in defiance of the 
terms of the Treaty of Bretigni, summoned Prince Edward to 
Paris— as though he were his vassal — to answer the charges 
made against him. 'Gladly we will answer our summons,' 
replied the Prince, when he heard. ' We will go as the King 
of France has ordered us, but with helm on head and sixty 
thousand men.' 

They were bold words ; but the haughty spirit that dictated 
them spoke from the mouth of a dying man, and the Black 
Prince never lived to fulfil his boast. His place in France was 
taken by his younger brother, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, 
who proved himself an indifferent general. In 1373 Duke John 
marched from Calais into the heart of France, his army burning 
villages as it went ; but though he pressed deeper and ever 
deeper into the enemy's country, he met no open foes nor towns 



Henry V in France 249 

that he could take without a siege. ' Let them be,' said Charles 
' the Wise ', when his indignant nobles pleaded for leave to fight 
a pitched battle ; ' by burnings they shall not seize our heritage. 
Though a storm and tempest rage together over a land they 
disperse themselves : so will it be with these English.' 

Ever since the Treaty of Bretigni Charles had been planning 
profitable alliances with foreign rulers that would leave the 
English friendless ; while, like Henry the Fowler of Germany, 
he had fortified his cities against invasion. With the advent of 
winter Lancaster and his men could find no food nor succour 
from any local barons ; and when at last the remnant of his once 
proud army reached Bordeaux, it was without a single horse, 
and leaving a track of sick and dying to be cut off by guerrilla 
bands. He had not lost a single battle, but he was none the less 
defeated, and had imperilled the English cause in France. 

The truce of 1375 that practically closed the first period of 
the Hundred Years' War left to Edward III and his successors 
no more than the coast towns of Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, 
Bayonne, and Bordeaux. 

When in 1415 Henry V of England formally claimed the 
throne of France, and by so doing renewed the war that had 
languished since 1375, he had no satisfactory argument save his 
sword to uphold his demands. Grandson of John of Gaunt, and 
son of the royal usurper Henry IV, who had deposed and killed 
his cousin Richard II, Henry V hoped by a successful campaign 
to establish the popularity of the Lancastrian dynasty. He 
wished also, like most mediaeval rulers, to find a battle-ground 
for his barons in any territory except his own. It is only fair 
to add that of the modern belief that the one possible excuse 
for shedding human blood is a righteous cause he had not the 
faintest conception. 

' War for war's sake ' might have been the motto of this most 
mediaeval of all English sovereigns; but if his purpose is in- 
defensible to-day in its selfish callousness, he at any rate chose an 
admirable time in which to put it into execution ; for France, that 
had begun to recover a semblance of nationality under the rule 



250 The Hundred Years' War 

of Charles ' the Wise ', had degenerated into anarchy under his 
son Charles 'the Mad'. 

First as a minor, for he was only eleven at the time of his 
accession, and later when he developed frequent attacks of in- 
sanity, Charles VI was destined to be some one else's tool, while 
round his person raged those factions for which Louis VIII had 
shortsightedly prepared when he set the example of creating 
appanages. 1 First one ' Prince of the Lilies ' and then another 
strove to control the court and government in their own inter- 
ests ; but the most formidable rivals at the beginning of the 
fifteenth century were the Houses of Burgundy and Armagnac. 

The latter centred in the person of the young Charles, Duke 
of Orleans, the King's nephew and a son-in-law of Count 
Bernard of Armagnac, who gave his name to the party : the 
other was his cousin, John 'the Fearless', Duke of Burgundy, who 
was also by inheritance from his mother Count of Flanders, and 
therefore ruler of that great middle province lying between 
France and the Empire. 

The King himself in his moments of sanity inclined to the side 
of Charles of Orleans and the Armagnacs ; and it happened that 
just at the time when Henry V of England landed in Normandy 
and laid siege to Harfleur the Armagnacs controlled Paris. It 
was their faction therefore that raised an army and sent it north- 
wards to oppose the invaders, while John of Burgundy stood 
aloof, for besides being unwilling to help the Armagnacs he was 
reluctant to embroil himself in a war with England, on whose wool 
trade the commercial fortunes of his Flemish towns depended. 

At Agincourt Henry V, who had taken Harfleur and was 
marching towards Calais, came upon his foes drawn up across 
the road that he must follow in such vastly superior numbers 
that they seemed overwhelming. The battle that followed, how- 
ever, showed that the French had learned no military lesson 
from previous disasters. The heavily-armed, undisciplined noble 
on horseback was still their main hope, and on this dark 
October day he floundered helplessly in the mud, unable to 
charge, scarcely able to extricate himself, an easy victim for his 

1 See p. 223. 



The Treaty of Troyes 251 

enemy's shafts. The slaughter was tremendous ; for Henry, 
receiving a false report that a new French army was appearing 
on the horizon, commanded his prisoners to be killed, and 
numbers had perished before the mistake was discovered and 
the order could be reversed. 

When the news of the defeat and massacre at Agincourt 
reached Paris, that had always hated the Armagnacs, the 
indignant populace broke into rebellion, crying, 'Burgundy and 
Peace ! ' but the movement was suppressed, and it was not till 
1418 thatjohn 'the Fearless' succeeded in entering the capital. 
By this time Henry V, who had returned to England after his 
victory, was once more back in France conquering Normandy; 
and French indignation was roused to white heat when it was 
known that Rouen, the old capital of the Duchy, had been forced 
to surrender to his victorious arms. 

Even the Duke of Burgundy, who still disliked war with 
England, felt that he must take some steps to prevent further 
encroachments ; and, after negotiations with the enemy had failed 
owing to their arrogant demands, he suggested an agreement 
with the Armagnacs, in order that France, if she must fight, 
should at least present a united front to her foes. 

Here was the moment for France's regeneration ; for the 
head of the Armagnac faction at this date was the Dauphin 
Charles, son of Charles ■ the Mad ', and in response to his rival's 
olive branch he consented to meet him on the bridge of 
Montereau in order that the old rift might be cemented. In token 
of submission and goodwill John of Burgundy knelt to kiss the 
Prince's hand ; but, as he did so, an Armagnac still burning 
with party hate sprang forward and plunged his dagger into his 
side. A shout of horror and rage arose from the Burgundians, 
and as they carried away the body of John 'the Fearless' they 
swore that this murder had been arranged from the beginning and 
that they would never pay allegiance again to the false Dauphin. 

In the Treaty of Troyes that was forthwith negotiated with the 
English they ratified this vow, for Henry V of England received 
the hand of the mad king's daughter Catherine in marriage and 
was recognized as his heir to the throne of France. 



252 The Hundred Years' War 

Two years later died both Henry V and Charles VI, leaving 
France divided into two camps, one lying mainly in the north 
and east, that acknowledged as ruler the infant Henry VI, son of 
Henry V and Catherine; the other in the south and south-west, 
that obeyed the Valois Charles VII. 

The Treaty of Troyes marks the high-water mark of English 
power in France during the second period of the Hundred Years' 
War; for, though the banners that Henry V had carried 
so triumphantly at Agincourt were pushed steadily southward 
into Armagnac territory after this date, yet the influence of 
the invaders was already on the wane. The agreement that 
gave France to a foreigner and a national enemy had been made 
only with a section of the French nation ; and some of those 
who in the heat of their anger against the Armagnacs had 
consented to its terms were soon secretly ashamed of their 
strange allegiance. 

When Charles the Dauphin became Charles VII he ceased to 
appear merely the leader of a party discredited by its murder 
of the Duke of Burgundy. He became a national figure ; and 
though his enemies might call him in derision ' King of Bourges ' 
because he dared not come to Paris but ruled only from 
a town in central France, yet he remained in spite of all their 
ridicule a king and a Frenchman. Had he been less timid and 
selfish, more ready to run risks and exert himself rather than to 
idle away his time with unworthy favourites, there is no doubt 
that he could have hastened the English collapse. Instead he 
allowed those who fostered his indolence and hatred of public 
affairs in order to increase their own power to hinder a re- 
conciliation with the Burgundians that might have been the 
salvation of France. 

Philip 'the Good', son of John 'the Fearless', disliked the 
Dauphin as his father's murderer, but he had little love for 
his English allies. By marriage and skilful diplomacy he had 
absorbed a great part of modern Holland into his already vast 
inheritance and could assume the state and importance of an 
independent sovereign. With England he felt that he could 
treat as an equal, and now regarded with dismay the idea that 



Jeanne d'Arc 253 

she might permanently control both sides of the Channel. So 
long as John, Duke of Bedford, brother of Henry V, acted 
as regent for his young nephew with statesmanlike moderation, 
an outward semblance of friendship was maintained ; but Bedford 
could with difficulty keep in order his quarrelsome, irresponsible 
younger brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who ruled in 
England, and with still greater difficulty quell the sullen discon- 
tent of the people of Paris who, suffering from starvation as the 
result of a prolonged war, professed to regard a foreign king as 
the source of all their troubles. 

Only the prestige of English arms retained the loyalty 
of northern France. 'Two hundred English would drive five 
hundred French before them/ says a chronicler of the day ; but 
salvation was to come to France from an unexpected quarter, 
and enable the same writer to add proudly, ' Now two hundred 
French would chase and beat four hundred English.' 

In the village of Domremy on the Upper Meuse there lived at 
the beginning of the fifteenth century a peasant maid, Jeanne 
d'Arc, who was, according to the description of a fellow villager, 
'modest, simple, devout, went gladly to Church and sacred 
places, worked, sewed, hoed in the fields, and did what was 
needful about the house.' Up till the age of thirteen Jeanne had 
been like other light-hearted girls, but it was then that a change 
came into her life : voices seemed to draw her away from her com- 
panions and to speak to her from behind a brilliant cloud, and 
later she had visions of St. Catherine and of St. Michael, whose 
painted effigies she knew in church. 

' I saw them with my bodily eyes as clearly as I see you,' she 
said when questioned as to these appearances, and admitted that 
at first she was afraid but that afterwards they brought her 
comfort. Always they came with the same message, in her own 
words, ' that she must change her course of life and do marvellous 
deeds, for the King of Heaven had chosen her to aid the King 
of France.' 

Jeanne d'Arc was no hysterical visionary : she had always a 
fund of common sense, and knew how ridiculous the idea that 
she, an uneducated peasant girl, was called to save France would 



254 The Hundred Years' War 

seem to the world. For some time she tried to forget the 
message her Voices told her ; but at last it was borne in upon 
her that God had given her a mission, and from this time neither 
her indignant father nor timid friends could turn her from her 
purpose. 



in 142c) 

English Possessions 
Buraundian » U.U.' 

Boundary dt French 
Kingdom sKoton thuy 




Of all the difficulties and checks that she encountered before 
at last, at the age of seventeen, she was allowed to have 
audience with Charles VII, there is no space to tell here. News 
of her persistence had spread abroad, and the torch-lit hall of the 
castle into which Jeanne was shown was packed with gaily-clad 
courtiers, and standing amongst them the King, in no way 
distinguished from the others by his dress or any outward 



Jeanne d'Are 255 

pomp. Every one believed that the peasant-maid would be 
dazzled ; but she, who had seen no portrait of the King and 
lived all her life in the quiet little village of Domremy, showed 
no confusion at the hundreds of eyes fixed on her. Recognizing 
at once the man with whom her mission was concerned she went 
straight to him and said, ' My noble lord, I come from God 
to help you and your realm.' 

There must have been something arresting in Jeanne's 
simplicity and frankness contrasted with that corrupt atmosphere. 
Even the feeble king was moved; and, when she had been 
questioned and approved by his bishops, he allowed her to ride 
forth, as she wished, with the armies of France to save for him the 
important town of Orleans that was closely besieged by the 
English. She went in armour with a sword in hand and a banner, 
and those who rode with her felt her absolute belief in victory, 
and into their hearts stole the magic influence of her own gay 
courage and hope. 

We have often spoken of ' chivalry ', the ideal of good conduct 
in the Middle Ages. The kings, princes, and knights, whose 
prowess has made the chronicles of Froissart famous, were 
to their journalist veritable heroes of chivalry, exponents of 
courage, courtesy, and breeding. Yet to modern eyes these 
qualities seem often tarnished, since the heroes who flaunted 
them were in no way ashamed of vices like cruelty, selfishness, 
or snobbery. A King John of France would die in a foreign 
prison rather than break his parole, but he would disdainfully 
ride down a ' rabble ' of archers whom his negligence had left 
too tired to fight his battles. The Black Prince would wait like 
a servant on his royal prisoner, but accept as a brother-in-arms 
to be succoured a human devil like Pedro the Cruel; or put 
a town to the sword, as he did at Limoges, old men, women, and 
children, because it had dared to set him at defiance. 

There is nothing of this tarnish in the chivalry of the peasant- 
maid who saved France. Pure gold were her knightly deeds, 
yet achieved without a trace of the prig or the boaster. Jeanne 
d'Arc was always human and therefore lovable, quick in her 
anger at fraud, yet easily appeased ; friendly to king and soldier 



256 The Hundred Years' War 

alike, yet never losing the simple dignity that was her safeguard 
in court and camp. Of all mediaeval warriors of whom we 
read she was the bravest ; for she knew what fear was and would 
often pray not to fall into the hands of her enemies alive, yet she 
never shirked a battle or went into danger with a downcast 
face. A slim figure, with her close-cropped dark hair and 
shining eyes, she rode wherever the fight was thickest, always, 
in the words of a modern biographer, ' gay and gaily glad,' quick 
to see her opportunities and follow them up, joyful in victory, 
generous to her foes, pitiful to the wounded and prisoners. 

The sight of her awoke new courage in her countrymen, 
dismay as at the supernatural in her enemies, who dubbed her a 
witch and vowed to burn her. 

' Suddenly she turned at bay/ says a contemporary account 
of one of her battles, 'and few as were the men with her 
she faced the English and advanced on them swiftly with stan- 
dard displayed. Then fled the English shamefully and the 
French came back and chased them into their works.' 

Orleans was relieved and entered, the reluctant, still half- 
doubting Charles led to Reims, and there in the ancient capital 
of France crowned, that all Frenchmen might know who was 
their true king. 'The Maid' urged that the ceremony should 
be followed by a rapid march on Paris ; but favourites who 
dreaded her influence whispered other counsels into the royal 
ear, and Charles dallied and hesitated. When at last he 
advanced it was to find that the bridges over the Seine had been 
cut, not by the retreating English but by French treachery. 

Paris was ripe for rebellion, and at the sight of 'the Maid' 
would have murdered her foreign garrison and opened her gates. 
Bedford was in the north suppressing a revolt, yet Charles, 
clutching at the excuse of the broken bridges, retreated south- 
wards, disbanding his army and leaving his defender to her fate. 

Her Voices now warned Jeanne of impending capture and 
death, but her mission was to save France, and hearing that the 
Duke of Burgundy planned to take the important town of 
Compiegne she rode to its defence with a small force. Under 
the walls, in the course of a sortie, she was captured, refusing to 



J 



eanne cTArc 257 



surrender. ' I have sworn and given my faith to another than you, 
and I will keep my oath/ shedeclared ; and through the monthsthat 
followed, caged and fettered in a dark cell of the castle of Rouen, 
exposed to the insults of the rough English archers, she main- 
tained her allegiance, saying to her foes of the prince who had failed 
her so pitiably, ' My King is the most noble of all Christians.' 

Frenchmen (some of them bishops, canons, and lawyers of the 
University of Paris), as well as Englishmen, were amongst those 
who, after the mockery of a trial, sent Jeanne to be burned as a 
heretic in the market-place of Rouen. Bravely as she had lived she 
died, calling on her saints, begging the forgiveness of her enemies, 
pardoning the evil they had done her. ' That the world ', says 
a modern writer, ' might have no relic of her of whom the world 
was not worthy, the English threw her ashes into the Seine,' 

France, that had betrayed Jeanne d'Arc, needed no relic to 
keep her memory alive. To-day men and women call her 
Saint, and one miracle she certainly wrought, for she restored to 
her country, that through years of anarchy had almost lost belief 
in itself, the undying sense of its own nationality. ' As to peace 
with the English,' she had said, 'the only peace possible is for 
them to return to their own land.' Within little more than twenty 
years from her death the mission on which she had ridden forth 
from Domremy had been accomplished, and Calais, of all their 
French possessions, alone remained to the enemies of France. 

In summary of the Hundred Years' War it may be said that 
from the beginning the English fought in a lost cause. Fortune, 
military genius, and dogged courage gave to their conquests a 
fictitious endurance ; but nationality is a foe invincible because 
it has discovered the elixir of life ; and when the tide of fortune 
turned with the coming of 'the Maid' the ebb of English 
discomfiture was very swift. 

In 1435 died the Duke of Bedford, and in the same year 
Charles VII, moved from his sluggishness, concluded at Arras a 
treaty with Philip of Burgundy that secured his entry into Paris. 
By good fortune his young rival in the ensuing campaigns, the 
English King, Henry VI, had inherited, not the energy and valour 
of his father, but an anaemic version of his French grandfather's 



258 The Hundred Years' War 

insanity. Even before his first lapse into melancholia, he was the 
weak puppet of first one set of influences, then another ; and the 
factions that strove to govern for their own interests in his name 
lost him first Normandy and then Guienne. Finally they 
carried their feuds back across the Channel to work out what 
seemed an almost divine vengeance for the anarchy they 
had caused in France, in the troubled ' Wars of the Roses \ 

Under Charles VII, well named le bien servi, France, as 
she gradually freed herself from a foreign yoke, developed from 
a mediaeval into the semblance of a modern state. Wise 
ministers, whom in his later years the King had the sense to 
substitute for his earlier workless favourites, built up the power 
of the monarchy, restored its financial credit, and established 
in the place of the disorderly ' companies ' a standing army 
recruited and controlled by the crown. 

These things were not done without opposition, and the 
rebellion of ' the Praguerie ', in which were implicated nearly all 
the leading nobles of France, including the King's own son, the 
Dauphin Louis, was a desperate attempt on the part of the 
aristocracy to shake off the growing pressure of royal control. It 
failed because the nation, as a whole, saw in submission to an abso- 
lute monarch a means, imperfect perhaps but yet the only means 
available at the moment, of securing the regeneration of France. 

It is significant that when Louis XI succeeded to Charles VII 
he inevitably followed in his father's footsteps, forsaking the 
interests of the class with which he had first allied himself, 
in order to rule as an autocrat and fulfil the ideal of kingship in 
his day. 

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 



Philip VI of France 
John II of France 
Charles V of France . 
Charles VI of France . 
Charles VII of France 



1328-50 1 Henry V of England . . 1413-22 



1350-64 
1364-80 
1380-1422 
1422-61 



Henry VI of England . . 1422-61 

Boccaccio I 3 I 3-75 

Jeanne d'Arc .... 1412-30 



XIX 

SPAIN IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

Spain has been rightly described as ' one of the most cut up 
portions of the earth's surface '. A glance at her map will show 
the numerous mountain ranges that pierce into the heart of the 
country, dividing her into districts utterly unlike both in climate 
and soil. Even rivers that elsewhere in Europe, as in the case 
of the Rhine and the Danube, act as roads of friendship and 
commerce, are in Spain for the most part unnavigable, running 
in wild torrents between precipitous banks so as to form an 
additional hindrance to intercourse. 

Geography thus came to play a very great part in the history 
of mediaeval Spain, deciding that though overrun by Romans, 
Vandals, Visigoths, and Saracens, no conquest should be ever 
quite complete, since the invaded could always find inaccessible 
refuges amongst the mountains. A spirit of provincial indepen- 
dence was also fostered, as in Italy 1 — men learning to say first 
not ' I am a Spaniard,' but ' I am of Burgos,' or 'of Andalusia,' 
or of ' Barcelona,' according to their neighbourhood. 

When the Saracens defeated King Rodrigo and his Christian 
army at the battle of Guadalete, 2 we have seen that they found 
the subjugation of southern and central Spain an easy matter. 
Rich towns and districts passed into their hands almost without 
a blow : the Gothic nobles and their families who should have 
defended them, weakened by tribal dissensions, fled away north- 
wards to the mountains of Leon and Asturias, while the down- 
trodden masses that they left behind soon welcomed their new 
masters. 

It was the policy of the Moors to grant a slave his freedom on 

1 See p. 53- 2 See p. 62. 

S 2 



260 Spain in the Middle Ages 

his open acknowledgement of Allah as the one God and Mahomet 
as his Prophet, while they allowed those Christians and Jews 
who refused to surrender their faith to live in peace on the pay- 
ment of a poll-tax not required from Moslems. 

The capital of the Saracen kingdom, or ' Caliphate ', that was 
destined to survive practically unmolested for some three hundred 
years, was the town of Cordova, whose capture the Moors believed 
had been divinely inspired by Allah, since as their army under 




SPANISH KINGDOMS 
1161 ~ 1492 



cover of the darkness swept up to the walls, a terrific hail-storm 
descended that deadened the clatter of approaching hoofs. From 
a treacherous shepherd one of the captains learned of a part of 
the fortifications easy to scale ; and, climbing up undetected by 
means of a fig-tree, he let down his long turban to assist his 
fellows until a sufficient number had mounted to overpower the 
guards and open the gates to the main army. 

To the Spaniards, thus defeated almost in their sleep, Cordova 
was a fallen city, disgraced by the presence of infidels ; yet these 



The Caliphate of Cordova 261 

same infidels were to make her luxury and brilliance rival the 
almost fabulous glories of Bagdad and to win for her culture the 
grudging admiration of Christian Europe. As we read of her 
' Palace of Pleasures ', ornamented with gold and precious stones, 
ofherwoodsof pomegranate and sweet almond, of her gardens and 
perfumed fountains, of her luxurious rest-houses for travellers 
without the walls, we are back in the atmosphere of some Eastern 
fairy tale that clings also around the history of her Caliphs, 
tinging with romance their loves, their hatreds, and their 
rivalries. 

There are other aspects of Moorish Spain hardly less wonder- 
ful when contrasted with the haphazard national development 
of the rest of Europe. Here were agriculture and industry 
deliberately stimulated by a close and practical study of such 
branches of knowledge as science and botany, algebra and 
arithmetic. Arid soil, that under ordinary mediaeval neglect 
would have been left a desert, became through canals and irriga- 
tion a fertile plain, the garden of rice, sugar, cotton, or oranges. 
Mathematics applied to everyday needs produced the mariner's 
compass ; scientific brains and intelligent workmen the steel 
blades of Toledo and Seville, the woven silk fabrics of Granada, 
and the pottery and velvets of Valencia. 

Yet, though knowledge was consciously applied for commercial 
purposes, the Moors did not set up ' Utility ' as an idol for their 
scholars and tell them that only information "that brought 
material wealth in its train was worth having. Philosophy and 
literature, as well as science, had their lecture-halls : Greece and 
the East were searched by Caliphs' orders for manuscripts to 
fill their libraries; and so world-famous became Cordovan 
professors that in the twelfth century Christian students hastened 
to sit at their feet ; and the translations of Aristotle by the Arabic 
professor Averroes became one of the chief sources of authority 
for the most orthodox ' schoolmen '. 

In their search after knowledge for its own sake, the Moors 
accorded toleration to the best brains of all races. Elsewhere in 
Europe the Jews were held accursed, protected by Christian 
rulers so long as their money-bags could be squeezed like a 



262 Spain in the Middle Ages 

sponge, but exposed to insult, torture, and death whenever 
popular fury, aroused by a crusade or an epidemic, demanded an 
easy outlet for zeal in burning and pillaging houses. 

Christian fanaticism had closed nearly every avenue of life 
to the Jew save that of money-lender, in which he found few 
competitors, since the law of the Church forbade usury. It then 
proceeded to condemn him as a blood-sucker because of the high 
rate of interest that his precarious position induced him to charge 
for his loans. Thus, despised, hated, and feared, persecution 
helped to breed in the average Jew the very vices for which he 
was blamed, namely, the determination to sweat his Christian 
neighbours, and an arrogant absorption in his own race to the 
exclusion of all others. 

In the cities of the Moors alone the Jew could rise to public 
eminence, as in Cordova, where teachers of the race were 
especially noted for their researches in medicine and surgery. 
Many Spanish Israelites indeed became doctors, and proved 
themselves so unmistakably superior in knowledge and skill to 
the ordinary quacks that rulers of Christian states were thankful 
to employ them when their health was in danger. 

It would seem at first sight as if this happy kingdom of the * 
Moors, where culture, comfort, and toleration reigned, must in 
time succeed in spreading its civilizing influence over Europe ; 
but there was another and darker side to Moslem Spain. The 
Caliphate of Cordova, like other Moslem states, was the victim 
of a form of government whose sole bond was the religion of 
Islam. Its ruler was a tyrant independent of any popular 
control, and could send even his Grand Vizier, or chief minister, 
to death by a word. Such an exalted position had its penalties, 
and the Caliph must keep continual watch lest he should find 
enemies ready to slay him, not merely amongst his servants, but 
even more amongst his sons or brothers. Since polygamy 
prevailed, in nearly every family there were children of rival 
mothers, who learned from their cradles to hate and fear each 
other. It depended only, as it seemed, on a little luck or cunning 
who would succeed to the royal title, and few scrupled to use 
dagger or poison to ensure themselves the coveted honour. 



The Cid 263 

Out of the feuds and plots of the Moorish court and the rise 
and fall of Emirs and Sultans in the provinces, Moorish Spain 
prepared its own downfall during the three centuries that it 
dominated southern and central Spain. 

Away in the north, in Asturias, the 'cradle of the Spanish 
race ', where every peasant considers himself an ' hidalgo ' or 
noble, in the kingdoms of Leon and Navarre, in the counties of 
Castile and Barcelona, the descendants of the once enfeebled 
Goths were meanwhile developing into a race of warriors. 

Though ardent in his devotion to Christianity, weaving super- 
natural aid around every victory, the Spaniard did not, in what 
might be called the first period of ' the Reconquest ', show any 
acute dislike of the Moor. His early struggles were not for 
religion but for independence, and often a Prince or Count would 
join with some friendly Emir to overthrow a Christian rival. 
' All Kings are alike to me so long as they pay my price ! ' These 
words of Rodrigo (Ruy) Diaz, the greatest of Spanish heroes, 
were typical of his race in the age in which he lived. 

This Ruy Diaz, ' El Campeador ', or ' the Challenger ', as the 
Christians named him, but more popularly called by his Arabic 
title 'Al Said' or 'the Cid', meaning 'the Chief, was brave, 
generous, boastful, and treacherous. A Castilian by race, he 
held his allegiance to the King of Leon, whose wars he some- 
times condescended to wage, as in no way sacred ; but when 
banished by that monarch, who had well-founded suspicions of 
his loyalty, proceeded unabashed to fight on behalf of his late 
master's enemy, the Moorish Sultan of Saragossa. 

It is evident from the old chronicles and ballads that the Cid 
himself could rouse and keep the affection of those who served 
him. When he sent for his relations and friends to tell them 
that he had been banished by the King of Leon and to ask who 
would go with him into exile, we are told that ' Alvar Fanez, who 
was his cousin, answered, " Cid, we will all go with you through 
desert and through peopled country, and never fail you. In 
your service will we spend our mules and horses, our wealth and 
our garments, and ever while we live be unto you loyal friends 
and vassals" : and they all confirmed what Alvar Fafiez had said.' 



264 Spain in the Middle Ages 

Mediaeval Spain was always ready to admire a warrior; and 
a great part of the Cid's charm lay, no doubt, in his prowess on 
the battle-field, when, charging with his good sword 'Tizona' in 
hand, none could withstand the onslaught. To this admiration 
was added the deeper feeling of fellowship, Their hero might 
spill the blood of hundreds to attain his ambitions, but he was 
yet no noble after the mediaeval French type, despising those of 
inferior rank ; rather a full-blooded Spaniard, keen in his sym- 
pathy with all other Spaniards. 

As he rode from the town of Burgos on his way to exile the 
Cid called Alvar Fanez to his side and said, ' Cousin, the poor 
have no part in the wrong which the King hath done us ... . See 
now that no wrong be done unto them along our road.' ' And an 
old woman who was standing at her door said, " Go in a lucky 
minute and make spoil of whatever you wish.'" 

The Cid's ' luck ', or perhaps it would be truer to say his 
admirable discretion, carried him triumphantly through many 
campaigns — at times reconciled with the Christian king and fight- 
ing under his banner, at others laying waste his lands as 
a Moorish ally. At length he reached the summit of his fortunes 
and carved himself a principality out of the Moorish province of 
Valencia ; and as ruler of this state made little pretence of being 
any one's vassal, but boasted that he, a Rodrigo, would free 
Andalusia as another Rodrigo had let her fall into bondage. 

This kingly achievement was denied him, for even heroes 
fail ; so that a time came when he fell ill, and the Moors invaded 
his land, and because he could no longer fight against them he 
turned his face to the wall and died. Yet his last victory was 
still to come ; for his followers, who had served him so faithfully, 
embalmed his body, and they set him on his war-horse and 
bound 'Tizona' in his hand, and so they led him out of the city 
against his foes. Instead of weeping and lamentations the Cid's 
widow had ordered the church bells to be rung and war trumpets 
to be blown so that the Moors did riot know their great enemy 
was dead ; but imagining that he charged amongst them, terrible 
in his wrath as of old, they broke and fled. 

In spite of this victory Valencia fell back under the rule of the 



Las Navas de Tolosa 265 

Moors, but she never forgot ' Ruy Diaz ', and is proud to this 
day to be called ' Valencia of the Cid '. 

The second period of the reconquest of Spain by the 
Christians may be called the crusading period, and continued 
until the fall of Granada in 1492. It began not at any fixed 
date, but in the gradual realization by the Christian states during 
the twelfth century that their war with the Moors was something 
quite distinct and ever so much more important than their 
almost fraternal feuds with one another. This dawning con- 
viction was intensified into a faith, when the Moorish kingdom, 
that, owing to the feebleness and corruption of its government, 
had almost ceased to be a kingdom and split up into a number 
of warring states, was towards the end of the twelfth century 
overrun and temporarily welded together by a fierce Berber 
tribe from .North Africa, the Almohades. 

The Almohades, like earlier followers of Mahomet, were 
definitely hostile to both Christians and Jews, and so the feeling 
of religious bitterness grew; and the war that at first was 
a series of victories for the infidel developed its character of 
a crusade. 

Other crusades, we have seen, gained public support ; and at 
the beginning of the thirteenth century Pope Innocent III, no 
less alive to his responsibility towards Spain than towards 
the Holy Land, sent a recruiting appeal to all the countries 
of Europe. This was answered by the arrival of bands of 
Templars, Hospitallers, and other young warriors anxious to 
win their spurs against the heathen. Spain herself founded 
several Military Orders, of which the most famous was the 
Order of Santiago, that is, of St. James, called after the national 
saint, whose tomb at Compostella in the north was one of the 
favourite shrines visited by pilgrims. 

At the head of the Christian host, when it rode across the 
mountains to the plain of Las Navas de Tolosa, where it was 
destined to fight one of the most decisive of Spanish battles, was 
Alfonso VIII, 'the Good', of Castile, who had warred against 
the Moors ever since his coronation as a lad of fifteen. With 
him went his allies, the King of Navarre, commanding the 



266 Spain in the Middle Ages 

right wing, and Pedro II, King of Aragon, commanding the 
left. 

All day long the battle raged ; and the Christian kings and 
their knights fought like heroes ; but in spite of their efforts they 
were pressed back and defeat seemed almost certain. ' Here 
must we die,' exclaimed Alfonso bitterly, determined to sell his 
life at a high price ; but Rodrigo Ximenez, the fiery Archbishop 
of Toledo, replied, ' Not so, Senor, here shall we conquer!' and 
with his cross-bearer he charged so resolutely against the foe 
that the Christians, rallying to save their sacred standard, drove 
the Moors headlong from the field. So overwhelming was the 
victory that the advance of the Almohades was completely 
checked, and the Christian states became the dominating power 
in the peninsula. 

At first in their battles amongst themselves it had been 
Navarre that took the lead amongst the Christian states; but 
later this little mountain kingdom, that lay across the Pyrenees 
like a saddle and was half French in her sympathies and out- 
look, lost her supremacy. Spanish interest ceased to be centred 
in France, and focused itself instead in the lands that were 
slowly being recovered from the Moors. Portugal declared 
itself an independent kingdom, Castile broke off the yoke of 
Navarre and united with Leon, Aragon absorbed the important 
province of Catalonia, with its thriving seaport Barcelona. 

One of the most famous of Aragonese heroes in the thirteenth 
century was James 'the Conqueror ', son of Pedro II of Aragon, 
who during the Albigensian Crusade had died fighting on be- 
half of his brother and vassal, the Count of Provence, against 
• Simon de Montfort. 1 James, who was only six at the time, was 
taken prisoner by the cruel Count, but Innocent III insisted 
that he should be handed back to his own people, and these 
gave him to the Templars to educate. It was natural that in 
such a military environment the boy should grow up a soldier ; 
but he was to prove himself a statesman as well, and a lover of 
literature, writing in the Catalan dialect a straightforward, manly 
chronicle of his reign, and encouraging his Catalan subjects in 

1 See p. 215. 



James ( the Conqueror ' 267 

the devotion to poetry they had shared from early days with 
their Provencal neighbours. 

According to contemporary accounts the young king was 
handsome beyond all ordinary standards, nearly seven feet 
tall, and well built in proportion. Unfortunately he was so 
attractive that he became thoroughly spoilt, and was dissolute in 
his way of life and uncontrolled in his temper. When in one 
of his rages he was capable of any crime, though ordinarily so 
generous and tender-hearted that he hated to sign a death- 
warrant. In his chronicle he tells us how on one of his 
campaigns he found a swallow had built her nest by the roundel 
of his tent: 'So I ordered the men not to take it down,' he 
says, 'until the swallow had flown away with her young, since 
she had come trusting to my protection.' 

The combination of good looks, brains, and chivalry found in 
James I appealed to the imagination of the Aragonese, but still 
more did his fighting qualities that were typically Spanish. ' It 
has ever been the fate of my race ', he wrote, ' to conquer or die 
in battle ' ; and when quite a small boy he made up his mind 
that he would become a crusader. 

For many years after he was declared old enough to reign for 
himself King James was forced to spend his time and energy in 
subduing the nobles who during his long minority had been 
allowed to become a law unto themselves. This vindication of 
his authority accomplished, he led his armies against the Moors, 
and under his conquering banner ' Valencia of the Cid ' passed 
finally into Christian hands. 

The Moorish kingdom was now reduced to Granada in the 
south and the dependent province of Murcia to the north-east 
that was claimed by the Castilians, though Alfonso 'the Learned' 
of Castile was quite unable to make himself master of it. 

Hearing of the Aragonese victories in Valencia, Alfonso, who 
was 'the Conqueror's' son-in-law, asked King James if he 
would help him by invading Murcia, a project that first aroused 
the anger of the Aragonese because it seemed to them that they 
were expected to do the hard work in order that some one else 
might reap the spoils. 



268 Spain in the Middle Ages 

King James was more far-seeing than his subjects and held 
a different view. The Moors were weak at the moment; but, 
owing to the influx of fresh warriors from North Africa, they 
had always been able to rally their power in the past and might 
do so again. ' If the King of Castile happen to lose his land I 
shall hardly be safe in mine,' was his shrewd summary of the 
case ; and with this he invaded and overran Murcia, which he 
gave to his son-in-law in 1262. 

This date, 1262, though it marked no fresh acquisition of 
territory for Aragon, was nevertheless an epoch in her history. 
Hitherto her main interest had been identical with Castile's — 
namely, the freedom of Spain from the infidel — but now, owing 
to the conquest of Murcia, she was surrounded by Christian 
neighbours, and what remained of the crusade had become the 
business of Castile alone. Early in his reign also, King James had 
closed another chapter in Aragonese history, when, as a result 
of his father's defeat and death, he had been forced to cede all 
Catalonian claims to Provence, and thus to put away for ever 
the prospect of absorbing France that had dazzled his ancestors. 

Where, then, should Aragon turn her victorious arms ? King 
James, a true Aragonese, had already answered this question, 
when in 1229 he began the conquest of the Balearic Islands, 
thus clearly recognizing that his country's natural outlook for 
expansion was neither north nor south, but eastwards. Already 
Catalan fishermen and the merchants of Barcelona were disputing 
the commercial overlordship of the Mediterranean with their 
fellows of Marseilles and the Italian Republics, and thence- 
forward Aragonese kings were to take a hand in the game, 
supporting commerce with diplomacy and the sword. 

James 'the Conqueror' did not die in battle-harness, as he 
had predicted, but in the robe of a Cistercian monk, expiating 
in the seclusion of a monastery the sins of his tempestuous, 
pleasure-loving youth. His tradition as a warrior descended to 
his son Pedro III, under whose rule Aragon entered on her 
campaign of Italian conquests. 

Both the excuse for this undertaking and the occasion have 
been noticed elsewhere in another connexion. The excuse was 



Peter III of Aragon 269 

the execution of Conradin,' last legitimate descendant of the 
Neapolitan Hohenstaufen. As he stood on the scaffold calmly 
awaiting his death, the boy, for he was little more, had flung 
his gauntlet amongst the crowd. The action spoke for 
itself, the one bitter word ' revenge ' ; and a partisan who 
witnessed it, kneeling swiftly, picked up the glove and bore it 
away to Spain. Here he presented it to Pedro III, to whose 
wife Constance, the daughter of an illegitimate son of Frederick II, 
the claims of the Italian Hohenstaufen had descended. 

Pedro did not forget the glove or its message ; and when the 
Sicilians, rising in wrath at the Easter Vespers," massacred 
their Angevin tyrants, it was Aragonese ships that brought them 
succour, and Pedro who defied the anathemas of the Pope and 
the power of France to drive him from his new throne. 

All the failures and victories of the years that followed, when 
Aragonese and Angevin claimants deluged ' the Kingdom ' and 
adjoining island with blood, are more a matter of Italian than 
Spanish history, and it is with Castile that the interests of the 
peninsula become mainly concerned. 

Castile in later mediaeval times consisted of some two-thirds 
of the whole area of Spain, stretching from the Bay of Biscay in 
the north to the confines of the Moorish kingdom of Granada in 
the south. As her name suggests, she was a land of castles, 
built originally, not like the strongholds of Stephen's lawless 
barons in England — to maintain a tyranny over the countryside— 
but as military outposts in each fresh stage of the reconquest 
from Islam. Naturally those who lived in such outposts, and 
might be wakened any night to take part in a border foray or to 
withstand a surprise attack, expected to receive special privileges 
in compensation. This was as it should be, and grateful Kings 
of Castile, in order to encourage traders as well as knights and 
princes to settle on their dangerous southern border, offered 
concessions in the form of charters and revenues with a reckless 
prodigality at which other European monarchs would have 
shuddered. 

1 See p. 195. 2 See p. 229 



270 ■ Spain in the Middle Ages 

Trouble began when, with the steady advance of the crusading 
armies, outposts ceased to be outposts ; and yet their inhabitants, 
naturally enough again, saw no reason why they should be 
deprived of the privileges and riches that they had won in the 
past. Had, they known how to use their independence, when 
danger from the Moors diminished, in securing a government 
conscious of national needs and aspirations, Spain might have 
become the political leader of Europe. Unfortunately the average 
Castilian felt only a selfish sense of the advantages that liberty 
might afford, without realizing in the least that their possession 
entailed heavy responsibilities. Thus he allowed his country 
to degenerate into anarchy. 

War seemed the natural atmosphere of life to the Castilian 
of pure blood, whose ancestors had all been crusaders. Unable 
to compete in agriculture or industry with the thrifty Moslems 
or Jews who remained behind on the lands that he reconquered, 
he decided that labour, except with the sword, was the hall-mark 
of slaves ; and this unfortunate fallacy, widely adopted, became 
the ultimate ruin of Spain. It turned her from the true road of 
national prosperity, which can be gained only by solid work, 
while it prevented nobles and town representatives from under- 
standing one another, and so rendered them incapable of common 
action in the ' Cortes ', or national parliament. The fallacy went 
farther, for it made war between noble and noble seem a natural 
outlet for martial zeal when no Moslem force was handy on 
which to whet Christian swords. 

The part played by the King in this land of independent 
crusaders and aristocratic cut-throats was difficult and precarious. 
Though not so legally bound by the concessions he had been 
forced to make as in Aragon — where no king might pass a law 
without the consent of his Cortes and where the 'Justiciar', 
a popular minister, disputed his supreme right of justice— mediae- 
val Castilian monarchs were in practice very much at the mercy 
of their subjects. 

Henry II of England had been able to burn down his barons' 
castles and hang some of their owners, thus paving the way 
of royal supremacy ; but kings of Castile could scarcely adopt 



The c Siete Partidas ' 271 

such drastic measures against subjects usually more wealthy than 
themselves, whose castles were required as national fortresses, 
and whose retainers formed the main part of Christian armies 
against the Moors. Instead, custom and circumstances seemed 
ever forcing the rulers of Castile to grant new liberties, and to 
alienate their lands and revenues in constant rewards and bribes. 

This was one of the failings of Alfonso ' the Learned ', who 
in spite of his boast, ' Had I been present at the Creation I would 
have arranged the world better,' was certainly not ' the Wise ', 
as he is sometimes called. Alfonso was a great reader and 
a scientist in advance of his day ; but the best work that he ever 
did for his kingdom was the publication of the Siete Partidas 
(Seven Divisions), a compilation of all the previous laws of Spain, 
both Roman and Gothic, drawn up and arranged in a single 
code. For the rest, apart from his somewhat academic cleverness, 
he was vain, irresolute, and superficial. On one occasion he 
divorced his wife ; and then, when the new wife he had chosen, 
a Norwegian princess, had already arrived at a Spanish port, 
he decided to send her away and retain the old. This capricious- 
ness was of a piece with the rest of his actions. 

During the ' Great Interregnum ' J Alfonso was one of the 
claimants for the imperial crown, but had neither money nor 
sufficient popularity to carry through this foolish project, for 
which he heavily overtaxed his people. He also planned an 
invasion of Africa in grand crusading style, but had to turn his 
attention instead to struggling against unruly sons. He died 
with little accomplished save his reputation for wisdom. 

The reign of Alfonso X Was a prelude to a century and a half 
of anarchy in Castile, a period when few of her kings could 
claim to be either ' wise ' or ' learned ', and when four of them by 
ill fortune ascended the throne in childhood, and so presented 
their nobles with extra opportunities for seeking their own 
ambitions at the royal expense. 

On one struggle during this century and a half we have already 
touched — the bitter feud between Pedro ' the Cruel ', the Nero 
of Spain, and his half-brother, Henry of Trastamara. 2 There is 
1 See p. 229. - See p. 247. 



272 Spain in the Middle Ages 

no end to the list of crimes of which this monster has been 
accused, from strangling his rival's mother, and calmly watching 
while his half-brother, a twin of Henry of Trastamara, was 
pursued and cut down unarmed by the royal guard, to ordering 
that the young bride with whom he had refused to live should 
be given poisonous herbs that she might die. 

Stained, indeed, must the Black Prince have felt his honour 
when he discovered what a brother-in-arms he had crossed the 
Pyrenees to aid — one who would massacre prisoners for sheer 
love of butchery, burn a priest for prophesying his death, and 
murder an archbishop in a fit of savagery. It is probably true 
to describe this worst of the Spanish kings as mad : many of 
his atrocities were so meaningless, such obvious steps to his own 
downfall, because they alienated those who tried to remain loyal 
to his cause. His end, when it came, rejoiced the popular heart 
and imagination, for Pedro, according to tradition, was at last 
entrapped by the crafty Du Guesclin, lately released from 
imprisonment by the Black Prince, and once more in the service 
of Henry of Trastamara. 

King Pedro believed that every man had a price, and, on 
Du Guesclin's pretence that he might be bought over, stole 
secretly one night to the Frenchman's tent. Here he found his 
hated brother with some of his courtiers who cried aloud ' Look, 
Senor, it is your enemy.' ' I am ! I am ! ' screamed Pedro 
furiously, seeing he was betrayed, and flung himself on his 
brother, while the latter struck at him with his dagger. Over 
and over they rolled in the half-light of a tallow candle, until 
Pedro, who had gained the upper hand, fumbled for his poignard 
with which to strike a fatal blow. Then, according to the old 
ballad, Du Guesclin interfered. ' I neither make king nor mar 
king, but I serve my master,' he said, and turned Pedro over 
on his back, enabling those who were standing by to dispatch him 
with their knives. The tale, if creditable to Du Guesclin's loyalty, 
is hardly so to his love of fair play, but the murdered king had 
lived like a wild animal, and it is difficult to feel any regret 
that he died like one instead of in battle as a knight. 

The House of Trastamara was now established on the 



Henry IV of Castile 273 

Castilian throne by the triumphant Henry II. Some years 
later it gave also a king to its eastern neighbour, when the royal 
House of Aragon had become extinct in the male line. This 
was the Infante Ferdinand, a man of mature judgement, who 
had already won golden opinions for his honesty and statesman- 
ship when acting as guardian for his young nephew, John II 
of Castile. 

Both kingdoms, but more especially Castile, were to remain 
victims of civil wars and of frequent periods of anarchy for 
another half-century. John II, deprived of his uncle's wise 
guidance, devoted his time to composing love-songs and sur- 
rendered his weak will to a royal favourite, Alvaro de Luna, 
without whose consent, tradition says, he dared not even go to 
bed. The result was incessant turbulence, for the nobles hated 
the arrogant and all-powerful upstart, who managed the court 
as he pleased, and steadily added to his own estates and 
revenues. Yet, having brought about his downfall and death, 
they had no better government with which to replace his 
tyranny. 

Under John's son and successor Castile fared even worse ; 
for Henry IV was not merely weak but vicious, so that he rolled 
the crown in the mire of scandal and degradation. Government 
of any sort was now at an end. ' Our swords ', wrote a contem- 
porary Castilian, recalling this time of nightmare, ' were employed, 
not to defend the boundaries of Christendom, but to rip up the 
entrails of our country. ... He was most esteemed among us 
who was strongest in violence: justice and peace were far 
removed.' 

In their efforts to save something of their lives and fortunes 
from this wreck, towns and villages formed Hermandades or 
' brotherhoods '—that is, troops of armed men who pursued and 
punished criminals ; but these leagues without support from the 
crown were not strong enough to deal with the worst offenders, 
the wealthy nobles, who could cover their misdeeds with lavish 
bribery or threats. 

At this moment in Castile's history, when she had sunk to a 
depth from which she could not save herself, Henry IV died, 



274 Spain in the Middle Ages 

and was succeeded on the throne by his sister, Isabel, a girl in 
years but already a statesman in outlook and discretion. 
Henry IV had attempted to secure personal advantages in his 
lifetime by arranging various marriages for Isabel, first with a 
French prince, then with the King of Portugal, and finally with 
one of his own worthless favourites, and his sister had won his 
dislike by her steady refusal to agree to any of these alliances. 
Secretly, indeed, she had married her cousin Ferdinand, heir to 
the throne of Aragon, a youth already distinguished for his 
military abilities and shrewd common sense. 

As joint rulers of Castile and Aragon Isabel and Ferdinand 
dominated Spain, and were able to impose their will even on 
the most powerful of their rebellious subjects, taking back the 
crown lands that had been recklessly given away, organizing a 
Santa Hermandad, or ' Holy Brotherhood ', on the model of 
previous local efforts to ensure order, and themselves holding 
supreme tribunals to judge important cases of robbery and 
murder. In this display of authority the land not merely 
acquiesced but rejoiced, utterly weary of an independence the 
misuse of which had produced licence instead of freedom. 

Thus it was that a strong monarchy, such as Louis XI was 
able to establish in France at the end of the Hundred Years' 
War, and the Tudors in England after the Wars of the Roses, 
was also organized and maintained in Spain. Under its despotic 
sway many popular liberties were lost, but peace was gained at 
home, and glory and honour abroad above all expectations. 
The perpetual crusade against the Moors had always touched 
the imagination of Europe — now its crowning achievement, the 
Conquest of Granada, dazzled their eyes with all the pageantry 
and pomp of victory so dear to mediaeval minds. 

Hardly was this wonder told when news came that a Genoese 
adventurer had discovered, in the name of Isabel and Ferdinand, 
a Spanish empire of almost fabulous wealth beyond the Atlantic. 1 
To these triumphs were added conquests in Italy, fruits of 
Ferdinand's Aragonese ambitions. 

The glory of Spain belongs to modern not to mediaeval 

1 See p. 342. 



Ferdinand and Isabel 275 

history; but just as a man or woman is a development of the 
child, so this, the first nation in Europe as she became in the 
sixteenth century, proved the outcome of the qualities and vices 
of an earlier age. Above all things she became, as we should 
expect, a nation of warriors, inspired with ardour for the 
Catholic Faith, arrogant and ambitious. To her strength was 
added a fatal weakness bred of conceit and a narrow outlook, 
that is the intolerance that admired Ferdinand and Isabel's 
ruthless Inquisition and rejoiced in the expulsion of thousands 
of thrifty Jews and Moors. 

Spain was a born conqueror among nations, but what she 
conquered she had learned neither the sympathy nor adapta- 
bility to govern. Thus the empire won by her courage and 
endurance was destined to slip from her grasp. 



Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 

Saracen rule in Spain 711-1031 

The Cid . . . (died) 1099 

James I of Aragon 1213-76 

Pedro III of Aragon . 1276-85 

Alfonso X of Castile . 1252-84 

Pedro I of Castile 1350-69 

John II of Castile . ....... 1407-54 

Henry IV of Castile i454"74 

Isabel I of Castile 1474-1504 

Ferdinand II of Aragon 1479-1516- 



T 2 



XX 

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE IN THE 
LATER MIDDLE AGES 

The accession of Rudolf of Habsburg 1 as King of the Romans 
in 1273 is a turning-point in the history of mediaeval Germany. 
Hitherto private or imperial ambitions had prevented even well- 
intentioned emperors from exerting their full strength against 
anarchy at home ; while a few like Frederick II had deliberately 
ignored German interests. The result had been a steady process 
of disintegration, perpetuating racial and class feuds ; but now 
at last the tradition was broken and an Emperor chosen who was 
willing to forgo the glory of dominating Rome and .Lombardy in 
order to build up a nation north of the Alps. 

The election itself was somewhat of a surprise ; for Rudolf 
belonged to an obscure and far from wealthy family, owning 
territory in Alsace and amongst the Swiss mountains. What is 
interesting to the modern world is that the man who did most to 
influence the Electors in their choice, and thus helped to plant a 
Habsburg with his feet on the ladder of greatness, was a 
Hohenzollern. 

Count Rudolf at the time of his election was a middle-aged 
man of considerable military experience, kindly, simple, and 
resolute. He had won the affection of his own vassals by helping 
them in their struggles against the unjust demands of local tyrants, 
such as feudal bishops or the barons who built castles amongst 
the crags and sent out armed retainers to waylay merchants and 
travellers. One tale records how, with an apparently small force, 
he advanced boldly against a robber fastness, thus encouraging 
the garrison to issue out and attack him. When the robbers 
approached, however, they found to their horror that each of 
their mounted opponents had another armed man seated behind 

1 See p. 229. 



Rudolf I 277 

him, and so, hopelessly outnumbered as well as outwitted, they 
were forced to surrender or fly. 

Rudolf needed all his military ability when he was chosen 
Emperor ; for the most powerful ruler in central Europe at that 
time, King Ottocar of Bohemia, refused to recognize him, being 
furious that he himself had not received a single vote, while an 
obscure count from the Swiss mountains had been elected his 
master. The truth was that Ottocar was well known to be 
arrogant and bad-tempered, so that all the Electors were afraid 
of him ; and there was general rejoicing when, in a battle against 
King Rudolf near Vienna, he was killed and the throne of 
Bohemia passed to his son, a boy of twelve. 

This victory was the real beginning of the Habsburg fortunes ; 
for Rudolf by the "confiscation of the Austrian provinces of 
Carinthia, Styria, and Carniola, that had belonged to his rival, 
established his family as one of the great territorial powers of 
the Empire. Unfortunately his character seemed to deteriorate 
with success, and his greed for lands and power to increase with 
acquisition. 

Instead of finding Rudolf the protector of their liberties, his 
sturdy Swiss vassals now had to defend themselves against his 
encroachments ; and in the year 1291 some of them in self-defence 
formed what they called a ' Perpetual League ',, whose covenant, 
drawn up a few years later in a simplified form, is just as sacred 
a charter of liberty to the Swiss as Magna Charta to the English. 

' Know, all men,' it began, ' that we, the people of the Valley 
of Uri, the Community of the Valley of Schwyz, and the 
mountaineers of the Lower Valley, seeing the malice of the times, 
have solemnly agreed and bound ourselves by oath to aid and 
defend each other with all our might and main, with our lives 
and property, both within and without our boundaries, each at 
his own expense, against every enemy whatever who shall 
attempt to molest us, whether singly or collectively.' 

This was the first ' Confederation of the Swiss ', the union of 
the three provinces of Uri, Schwyz, and the ' Lower Valley ', or 
' Unterwalden '; but Rudolf died in the same year 1291, so that 
the Swiss struggle for liberty really began against his son, Albert 
of Austria. 



278 Central and Northern Europe 

Rudolf, in spite of the Concordat he had made with the Pope 
renouncing his claims over papal territory, had never been to 
Italy to be crowned Emperor, so that he died merely ' King of 
the Romans '; and the Electors of Germany made this one of 
their excuses for not immediately choosing his son to succeed him, 

Like Ottocar, Albert was overbearing and ambitious, and had 
at once on his father's death obtained possession of the entire 
family estates, without allowing any of them to pass to Count 
John of Habsburg, a son of his elder brother who had died some 
years before. Albert was a persistent man when he wished for 
anything very ardently, and, having failed to be elected Emperor 
a first time, he set himself to win friends and allies amongst the 
powerful families all over Germany. So successful was he that 
when a fresh imperial vacancy occurred in 1298 the choice of the 
Electors fell on him. 

This realization of his ambitions spurred Albert's energies to 
fresh efforts. He was now overlord of the Empire, but on his 
own estates amongst the Swiss mountains his will was often 
disputed by citizens and peasants, who claimed to have imperial 
permission for their independence. As Emperor, Rudolf could 
withdraw privileges light-heartedly granted by predecessors who 
were not Habsburgs; and with this in view he sent bailiffs and 
stewards to govern in his name, with orders to enforce complete 
submission to his demands. 

Concerning the events that followed, fiction has built round 
fact a wonderful tale, that, whether true or false in its main 
incidents, is characteristic of mediaeval Swiss daring, and a fit 
introduction to a great national struggle for liberty. 

Gessler, legend tells us, was the most hated of all Albert's 
Austrian governors. So narrow-minded was he that he hated to 
see the peasants building themselves stone houses instead of 
living in mud hovels, and would take every opportunity of 
humbling and oppressing them. 

Once he set up a hat on a pole in the market-place of one of 
the principal towns, and ordered every one who passed to salute 
it. A certain William Tell, either through obstinacy or careless- 
ness, failed to do so, on which Gessler, who had found out that 



Story of William Tell 279 

he was an archer, ordered him as a punishment to shoot at long 
range an apple placed on his son's head. In vain the father 
begged for any other sentence : Gessler only laughed. Seeing 
that entreaty was useless, Tell took two shafts, and with one he 
pierced straight through the apple. Gessler was annoyed at his 
success and, looking at him suspiciously, asked, ' What, then, is 
the meaning of thy second arrow ? ' The archer hesitated ; and 
not until he had been promised his life if he would answer the 
truth would he speak. Then he said bluntly, ' Had I injured my 
child my second shaft should not have missed thy heart.' 
There was a murmer of applause from the townsmen, but the 
governor was enraged at such a bold answer. ' Truly,' he 
shouted, ' I have promised thee life ; but I will throw thee into a 
dungeon, where never more shall sun nor moon let fall their rays 
on thee.' The legend goes on to relate how, though bound and 
closely guarded, the gallant archer made his escape, and hiding 
in the bushes not far from the road where Gessler must pass to 
his castle, he shot him and fled. ' It is Tell's shaft,' said the 
dying man, as he fell from his horse. By his daring struggle 
against the tyrant William Tell became one of Switzerland's 
national heroes. 

Fortunately for the Swiss, Albert was so busy as ruler of all 
Germany that he could not give the full attention to subduing his 
rebellious vassals that he would have liked ; and when at last he 
found time to visit his own estates, just as he was almost within 
sight of the family castle of the Habsburgs, he was murdered, 
not by a peasant, but by his nephew Count John, who considered 
that he had been unjustly robbed of his inheritance. 

The task of attempting to reduce the Swiss to submission fell 
on a younger son of King Albert, Duke Leopold, a youth who 
despised the peasants of his native valleys quite as heartily 
as the French their 'Jacques Bonhomme'. His army, as it 
wandered carelessly up the Swiss mountains, without order or 
pickets, resembled a hunting-party seeking a day's amusement; 
and on their saddles his horsemen carried bundles of rope 
to hang the rebels and bind together the cattle they expected to 
capture as spoils. 



280 Central and Northern Europe 

Meeting with no opposition, Duke Leopold began to ascend 
the frozen side of the Morgarten ; and here, as he advanced 
between high ridges, discovered himself in a death-trap. From 
the heights above, the Swiss of the Forest Cantons rained 
a deadly fire of stones and missiles that threw the horses below 
into confusion, slipping and falling on the smooth surface of 
the track. Then there descended from all sides small bodies 
of peasants armed with halberds, so sure-footed amid the snow 
and ice that they cut down the greater part of the Duke's forces 
before they could extricate themselves and find safe ground. 

Leopold escaped, but he rode from the carnage, according to 
his chronicler, ' distracted and with a face like death '. Swiss 
independence had been vindicated by his defeat ; and round the 
nucleus of the forest republics there soon gathered others, 
bound together in a federal union that, while securing the safety 
of all, guaranteed to each their liberties. 

Other campaigns still remained to be fought on behalf of com- 
plete Swiss independence ; and one of the most important 
of these occurred towards the end of the fifteenth century, and 
was waged against a military leader of Europe, Charles, Duke of 
Burgundy, son and successor of that Philip ' the Good ' who had 
played so great a part in the latter half of the Hundred Years' 
War. 1 

This Charles ' the Bold ', sometimes called also ' the Rash ' or 
' the Terrible ', was in many ways a typical mediaeval soldier. 
From his boyhood he had loved jousting — not the magnificent 
tourneys, in which as heir to the dukedom he could count 
on making a safe as well as a spectacular display of knightly 
courage, but real contests in which, disguised in plain armour, 
his strength and skill could alone win him laurels and avoid 
death. Strong and healthy, brave and impetuous, he loved the 
atmosphere of war with all its hazards and hardships. ' I never 
heard him complain of weariness,' wrote Philip de Commines, a 
French historian who was at one time in his service, 'and 
I never saw in him a sign of fear.' 

To qualities like courage and endurance Charles added failings 
1 See p. 252. 



Charles c the Bold' 281 

that were often his undoing — a hot temper, impatience, and 
a tendency to under-estimate the wits of his opponents. His 
clever, ambitious brain was always weaving plans, but he did not 
realize that he had neither the skill nor the political vision 
to keep many irons in the fire without letting one get too hot 
or another over-cold. 

Like all mediaeval rulers of Burgundy, he was faced by the 
problem of his middle kingdom, with its large commercial 
population, whose trade interests must be considered alongside 
his own territorial ambitions. To the rulers of both France and 
the Empire he was tenant-in-chief for different provinces, and 
either of these potentates could cause him discomfort by stirring 
up trouble amongst his subjects, or else unite with him to 
his great advantage in order to defy the authority of the other. 

At first Charles tried to increase his territory in the west 
at the expense of Louis XI of France, and even gained some 
showy triumphs, but gradually he found that he was no match in 
diplomacy for that astute king, 'the universal spider', as a 
contemporary christened him ; and so he turned his attention to 
his eastern border. 

Here he discovered that a Habsburg, Sigismund of the Tyrol, 
had become involved in a quarrel with the Swiss Cantons, and 
had been forced to promise them a large sum of money that he 
was quite unable to pay. When Charles offered- to lend him the 
sum required if he would hand over as security his provinces of 
Alsace and Breisgau, Sigismund, seeing no other alternative, 
reluctantly agreed. So remote was the prospect of repayment 
that the Duke of Burgundy at once began to rule the territories 
that he held in pawn as though they were his own, and might 
indeed have absorbed them quietly amongst his possessions had 
not the French ' Spider ' chosen to take a hand in the game. 
Louis XI had never forgiven Charles for his clumsy attempts to 
rob him of French territory, and now, weaving a web that was 
to entangle the Burgundian to his ultimate ruin, he secretly 
pointed out to the Swiss how much more dangerous a neighbour 
was Charles 'the Bold' than Sigismund 'the Penniless'. Let 
Sigismund, he suggested, agree to withdraw all Habsburg claims 



282 Central and Northern Europe 

to towns and lands belonging to the Cantons, and let the Cantons 
in return pledge themselves to pay for the restoration of the lost 
provinces. 

This compromise was finally arranged, and the exasperated 
Charles called upon to hand back the lands he already considered 
his own. Instead of complying he made overtures to both Louis 
and the Emperor, with such success that when the Swiss troops 
invaded Alsace in order to gain possession of that province for 
Sigismund, they found themselves without the powerful allies on 
whose support they had counted. 

Charles, ever too prone to over-estimate his importance, now 
believed that he was in a position to crush these presumptuous 
burghers once and for all. With a splendidly equipped army of 
some fifty thousand men, and some of the new heavy artillery 
that had already begun to turn battle-fields into an inferno, 
he crossed the Jura mountains and marched towards the town of 
Granson, that had been occupied by the Swiss. This he speedily 
reduced, hanging the entire garrison on the trees without the 
gates as an indication of how he intended to deal with rebels, 
and then continued on his way, since he heard that the army of 
the Cantons, some eighteen thousand men in all, had gathered 
in the neighbourhood. 

On the slopes of a vineyard he could soon see their vanguard, 
kneeling with arms outstretched. 'These cowards are ours/ he 
exclaimed contemptuously, and at once ordered his artillery 
to fire ; for he thought that the peasants begged for mercy, 
whereas, believing God was on their side, they really knelt 
in prayer. Mown down in scores, the Swiss maintained their 
ground ; and Charles, to tempt them from their strong position, 
ordered a part of his army to fall back as if in rout. This ruse 
his own Burgundians misunderstood, the more that at the 
moment they received the command they could see the main 
Swiss forces advancing rapidly across the opposite heights and 
blowing their famous war-horns. Confusion ensued, and soon, 
in the words of an old Swiss chronicler, 'the Burgundians took 
to their heels and disappeared from sight as though a whirlwind 
had swept them from the earth.' 



Battles of Granson and Morat 283 

Such was the unexpected victory of Granson, that delivered 
into Swiss hands the silken tents and baggage-wagons of the 
richest and most luxurious ruler in Europe. Carpets and 
Flemish lace, fine linen and jewellery, embroidered banners, 
beautifully chased and engraved weapons : these were some of 
the treasures, of which specimens are still to be found in the 
museums of the Cantons. 

Charles was defeated, ' overcome by rustics whom there would 
have been no honour in conquering,' as the King of Hungary 
expressed the situation in the knightly language of the day. 
Such a disgrace intensified Burgundian determination to con- 
tinue the war ; while the Swiss on their part found their 
resolution hardened by the sight of the garrison of Granson 
hanging from the trees. 

' There are three times as many of the foe as at Granson, but 
let no one be dismayed. With God's help we will kill them all.' 
Thus spoke a Swiss leader on the eve of the battle of Morat, 
where savage hand-to-hand fighting reduced the Burgundian 
infantry to a fragment and drove the Duke with a few horsemen 
in headlong flight from the field. 

Twice defeated, a wise prince might have done well to con- 
sider terms of peace with those who, though rustics, had 
proved more than his equals ; but Charles, a brave soldier, 
would not recognize that his own bad generalship had largely 
contributed to his disasters. He chose to believe instead in that 
convenient but somewhat thin excuse for failure, ' bad luck ', and 
prophesied that his fortune would turn if he persevered. 

More dubious of their ruler's ability than his fortune, the 
Flemings, as they grudgingly voted money for a fresh campaign, 
besought their Duke to make peace. His former allies, once 
dazzled by his name and riches, were planning to desert him : but 
Charles was deaf alike to hints of prudence or tales of treachery. 

Near the town of Nanci he met the Swiss for a third time, and 
once more the famous horns, 'the bull' of Uri and 'the cow' of 
Unterwalden, bellowed forth their calls to victory, and the 
Burgundians, inspired by treachery or forebodings of defeat, 
turned and fled. None knew what had happened to the Duke, 



284 Central and Northern Europe 

until a captured page reported that he had seen him cut down as 
he fought stubbornly against great numbers. Later his body 
was discovered, stripped for the- sake of its rich armour, and 
half-embedded in a frozen lake. 

Thus fittingly died Charles ' the Rash ', leaving the reputation 
as a warrior that he would gladly have earned to his enemies the 
Swiss, now regarded as amongst the invincible veterans of Europe. 

The voice of freedom had spoken so loudly through the 
Forest Cantons that mediaeval Europe had been forced to 
acknowledge her claim, and elsewhere also democratic forces 
were openly at work. We have spoken in previous chapters 
of the 'Communes ' of northern France and Italy, precocious in 
their civilization, modern in their demands for self-government. 
In Italy, at least, they had been strong enough to form Leagues 
and defeat Emperors ; but commercial jealousy and class feuds 
had always prevented these Unions from developing into a 
federation. 

This is true also of southern Germany, where towns like 
Augsburg and Nuremburg become, as the central mart for 
trade between Eastern and Western Europe and also between 
Venice, Genoa, and the lands north of the Alps, rivals in wealth 
and luxury of Mediterranean ports. During periods like the 
' Great Interregnum ', when German kingship was of no avail to 
preserve peace or order, it was associations of these towns that 
sent out young burghers to fight the robber knights that were 
the pest of the countryside, and to protect the merchandise on 
which their joint fortunes depended. 

Union for obvious purposes of defence was thus a political 
weapon forged early in town annals ; but, on the other hand, it 
was only slowly that burghers and citizens came to realize the 
advantages of permanent combination for other ends, such as 
commercial expansion, Or in order to secure stable government. 

This limited outlook arose partly from the very different 
stages of development at which mediaeval towns were to be found 
at the same moment. Some would be just struggling out of depen- 
dence on a local bishop or count by the payment of huge tolls, 



The c Hansa ' 285 

at the same time that others, though enjoying a good deal of com- 
mercial freedom, were still forced to accept magistrates appointed 
by their neighbouring overlord. Yet again, a privileged few 
would be 'free' towns, entirely self-governed, and owning 
allegiance only to the Emperor. Perhaps a master mind could 
have dovetailed all these conflicting systems of government into 
a federation that would have helped and safeguarded the 
interests of all, but unfortunately the mediaeval mind was a slave 
to the fallacy that commercial gain can only be made at the expense 
of some one else. 

The men of one town hated and feared the prosperity of 
another and were convinced that the utmost limit of duty to 
a neighbour was their own city walls. Nothing, for instance, 
is more opposed to modern codes of brotherhood than the early- 
mediaeval opinion on the subjects of wrecks. Men and women of 
those days saw no incongruity in piously petitioning God in 
public prayer for a good wreckage, or in regarding the ship- 
wrecked sailor or merchant cast on their rocks as prey to be 
knocked on the head and plucked. 

The towns of North Germany shared to the full this primitive 
savagery, but they learned the secret of co-operation that their 
wealthy southern neighbours utterly missed, and in so doing 
became for a time a political force of world-wide fame. 

Such was the commercial league of ' the Hansa ', formed 
first of all by a few principal ports, Li'ibeck, Danzig, Bremen, 
and Hamburg, lying on the Baltic or North Sea, but afterwards 
increased to a union of eighty or more towns as the value of 
mutual support and obligations was realized. 

Law in the Middle Ages was personal rather than territorial— 
that is to say, a man when he travelled abroad would not be 
judged or protected by the law of the country to which he went, 
but would carry his own law with him. If this law was practically 
non-existent, as for a German during years of anarchy when the 
Holy Roman Empire was thoroughly discredited in the eyes of 
Europe, the merchant stood a small chance of safeguarding 
himself and his wares. 

It was here, when emperors and kings of the Romans failed, 



286 Central and Northern Europe 

that the Hanseatic League stepped in, maintaining centres in 
foreign towns where the merchants of those cities included in 
the League could lodge and store their goods, and where 
permanent representatives of the League could make suit to the 
government of the country on behalf of fellow merchants who 
had suffered from robbery or violence. 

As early as the tenth century German traders had won 
privileges in English markets, for we find in the code of 
Ethelred 'the Rede-less' the following statement: 'The people of 
the Emperor have been judged worthy of good laws like ourselves. 5 

Later, 'steelyards,' or depots somewhat similar to the Flemish 
'staple-towns', were established for the convenience of imperial 
merchants ; and owing to the energy of the Hanseatic League 
these became thriving centres of commerce, respected by kings 
of England if jealously disliked by their subjects. 

Protection of the merchants belonging to 'theHansa' while in 
foreign countries soon represented, however, but a small part of 
the League's duty towards those who claimed her privileges. 
The merchant must travel safely to his market by land and sea ; 
but in North Germany he had not merely to fear robber knights 
but national foes : the hostile Slav tribes that attacked him as he 
rode eastwards to the famous Russian market of Nijni- Novgorod 
to negotiate for furs, tallow, and fats : or even more dangerous 
Scandinavian pirates who sought to sink his vessel as he 
crossed the Baltic or threaded the Danish isles. 

One of the chief sources of Hanse riches was the fishing 
industry, since the law that every Christian must abstain from 
meat during the forty days of Lent, and on the weekly Friday 
fast, made fish a necessity of life even more in the Middle Ages 
than in modern times. Now the cheapest of all fish for anxious 
housekeepers was the salted herring, and as the herring migrated 
from one ocean-field to another it made and unmade the fortune 
of cities. From the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the 
fifteenth century it chose the Baltic as a home of refuge from 
the North Sea whales, and in doing so built the prosperity of 
Liibeek, just as it broke that prosperity when it swam away 
to the coasts of Holland. 



The c Hansa ' 287 

For two months every year the North German fishermen cast 
nets for their prey as it swept in millions through the narrow 
straits past the coast of Skaania ; but here lay trouble for ' the 
Hansa', since Skaania, one of the southernmost districts of 
modern Sweden, was then a Danish province, and the Danes, 
who were warriors rather than traders, hated the Germans 
heartily. 




HOTe. U. = tInttt-uiLiin.- "Th* (fmptri is ?hacU2 



In early mediaeval times we have noticed Scandinavia as 
the home of Norse pirates ; as the mother of a race of world- 
conquerors, the Normans ; under Cnut, who reigned in England, 
Norway, and Denmark, as an empire-builder. The last ideal 
was never quite forgotten, for as late as the Hundred Years' 
War King Valdemar III of Denmark planned to aid his French 
ally by invading England ; but the necessary money was not 
forthcoming, and other and more pressing political problems 
intervened and stopped him. 



288 Central and Northern Europe 

Valdemar inherited from his Norse ancestors a taste for 
piracy that he pursued with a restless, unscrupulous energy very 
tiring to his people. Sometimes it brought him victory, but more 
often disaster, at least to his land. 'In the whole kingdom', 
says a discontented Dane, ' no time remained to eat, to repose, 
to sleep — no time in which people were not driven to work by 
the bailiffs and servants of the King at the risk of losing his 
royal favour, their lives, and their goods.' Because of his per- 
sistence Valdemar was nicknamed 'Atterdag', or 'There is 
another day ' : his boast being that there was always time to 
return to an}' task on completing which he had set his heart. 

Valdemar's chief ambition was to make Denmark the supreme 
power in northern Europe, and in endeavouring to achieve this 
object he was always forming alliances with Norway and Sweden 
that broke down and plunged him into wars instead. The Hanse 
towns he hated and despised, and in 1361, moved by this enmity, 
he promised his army that 'he would lead them whither there 
was gold and silver enough, and where pigs ate out of silver 
troughs'. His allusion was to Wisby, the capital of Gothland, 
that under the fostering care and control of North German 
merchants had become the prosperous centre of the Baltic 
herring-fishery. Under Valdemar's unexpected onslaught the 
city, with its forty-eight towers rising from the sea, was set on 
fire and sacked. 

Since Gothland was a Swedish island, vengeance for this 
insult did not legally rest with the Hansa, but, recognizing that 
the blow had been aimed primarily at her trade, she sent a fleet 
northwards to co-operate with the Swedes and Norwegians. 
This led to one of the greatest disasters that ever befell the 
Hanseatic League, for her allies did not appear, and her fleet, 
being outnumbered, was beaten and destroyed. 

Valdemar, delighted with his success, determined to reduce 
the North Germans to ruin, and continued his policy of aggres- 
sion with added zest; but in this he made a political mistake. 
Many of the towns, especially those not on the Baltic, were 
apathetic when the struggle with the Danish king began : they 
did not wish to pay taxes even for a victory, and angrily 



The ' Hansa' 289 

repudiated financial responsibility for defeat. It was only as 
they became aware, through constant Danish attacks, that the 
very existence of the League was at stake, that a new public 
opinion was born, and that it was decided at Cologne in 1367 
to reopen a campaign against King Valdemar, towards which 
every town must contribute its due. 

' If any city refuse to help ', ran the announcement of the 
meeting's decisions, ' its burghers and merchants shall have no 
intercourse with the towns of the German "Hansa", no goods 
shall be bought from them or sold to them, they shall have no 
right of entry or exit, of lading or unlading, in any harbour.' 

The result of the League's vigorous policy was entirely 
successful, and compelled the unscrupulous Valdemar, who found 
himself shortly in an awkward corner, to collect all the money 
that he could and depart on a round of visits to the various courts 
of Europe. He left his people to the fate he had prepared for 
them, and during his absence Copenhagen was sacked, and the 
Danes driven to conclude the Treaty of Stralsund that placed 
the League in control of all the fortresses along the coast of 
Skaania for fifteen years. 

The Hansa had now acquired the supremacy of the Baltic, 
and because the duty of garrisoning fortresses and patrolling the 
seas required a standing army and navy, the League of northern 
towns did not, like those in South Germany, Italy, or France, 
melt away as soon as temporary safety was achieved. Each 
city continued to manage its own affairs, but federal assemblies 
were held, where questions of common taxation and foreign 
policy were discussed, and where those towns that refused to 
abide by decisions previously arrived at were ' unhansed ', that 
is, deprived of their privileges. 

Even Emperors, who condemned leagues on principle from 
old Hohenstaufen experience, respected if they disliked ' the 
Hansa' that carried through national police-work in the north 
of which they themselves were quite incapable. 

The Emperor Charles IV, when he visited Liibeck, addressed 
the principal civic officials as ' My lords ! ' and when, suspicious 
of this flattery, they demurred, he replied, ' You are lords indeed, 



290 Central and Northern Europe 

for the oldest imperial registers know that Lubeck is one of the 
five towns that have accorded to them ducal rank in the imperial 
council.' The chronicler adds proudly that thus Lubeck was 
acknowledged the equal of Rome, Venice, Florence, and Pisa. 

In the latter half of the fourteenth century the Hanseatic 
League stood at the height of its power ; for though the political 
genius of Queen Margaret, daughter ofValdemar III, succeeded 
in uniting Denmark, Norway, and Sweden by the agreement 
called 'the Union of Kalmar', and also forced the Hansa to 
surrender the fortresses on the Skaania coast ; yet even the 
foundation of this vast Scandinavian Empire could not shake 
German supremacy over the Baltic. Under Margaret's succes- 
sors the Union of Kalmar degenerated into a Danish tyranny ; 
and because it was the result of a dynastic settlement and not of 
any national movement it soon came to shipwreck amid general 
discontent and civil wars. 

The Hanseatic League itself, though it lingered on as a 
political force through the fifteenth century, gradually declined 
and lost touch with the commercial outlook of the age. The de- 
cline may be traced partly to the fact that there was no vigorous 
national life in Germany to feed the League's vitality, but also to 
a steady tendency for towns to drift apart and become absorbed 
in the local interests of their provinces. 

The real blow to the prestige of the League was, however, the 
departure of the herring-shoals from the Baltic to the coasts of 
Amsterdam. 'The Hansa' had concentrated its commercial 
interests in the Baltic, and when the Baltic failed her she found 
herself unable to compete with the Dutch and English traders, 
who were already masters of the North Sea. 

Other and more adventurous rivals were opening up trade 
routes along the African coast and across the Atlantic ; but the 
Hanseatic League, with her rigid and limited conception of com- 
mercial interests, was like a nurse still holding by the hand 
children that should have been able to fend for themselves. 
Once the protection of her merchants, she had degenerated into 
a check on individual enterprise, and so, belonging to the spirit 
of the Middle Ages, with the Middle Ages passed away. 



The Teutonic Knights 291 

Another mediaeval institution, destined also to decline and 
finally vanish, was a close ally of the Hanseatic League, 
namely, the Order of Teutonic Knights. Transferred, as we 
have noticed, 1 on the fall of the Latin Empire in Asia Minor 
to the shores of the Baltic, the Order had there justified its 
existence by carrying on a perpetual war against the heathen 
Lithuanians and Prussians, building fortresses and planting 
colonies of German settlers, as Charlemagne and his Franks 
had set the example. 

While there still remained heathen to conquer the Knights 
were warmly encouraged by the Pope, and their battle-fields 
were a popular resort for the chivalry of nearly every country in 
Europe, competing in their claim with the camps of Valencia, 
Murcia, and Granada. 

Nearer home the Order found less favour. In Poland, for 
instance, that had at first welcomed the Knights as a bulwark 
against northern barbarism, the unpleasant knowledge gradually 
dawned that the crusaders, by securing the territory of Livonia, 
Curland, and Prussia, had cut her off from a lucrative sea- 
trade. 

Poland was the most easterly of those states that in mediaeval 
times owned a nominal allegiance to Holy Roman Emperors. 
She had received her Christianity from Rome, and was thus 
drawn into the network of western life — unlike Russia, or the 
kingdom of Rus as it was called, that was converted by mission- 
aries from Constantinople, and whose princes and dukes were 
subject to Mongol overlords in Siberia from the middle of the 
thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century. 

The Poles were brave, intensely devoted to their race, 
persistent in their enmities, and in none more than in their 
dislike of the German Knights, whose military genius and disci- 
pline had so often thwarted their ambitions. Quarrels and 
wars were continuous, but the most mortal wound dealt by the 
Poles was the result not of a victory but of a marriage alliance. 

In 1387, soon after the death of Louis ' the Great ', who had 
been King of both Hungary and Poland, the Poles offered their 

1 See p.' 151. 
U 2 



292 Central and Northern Europe 

crown to Duke Jagello of Lithuania, on the condition that he 
would marry one of Louis's daughters and become a Christian. 
The temptation of a kingdom soon overcame Jagello's religious 
scruples, so that he cast away his old gods and was baptized as 
Ladislas V, becoming the founder of the Jagellan dynasty, that 
continued on the thrones of Poland and Lithuania right through 
the Middle Ages. 

The conversion of the Lithuanians, who, whatever their beliefs, 
were driven at the spear-point to accept Jagello's new faith, com- 
pletely undermined the position of the Teutonic Order that, sur- 
rounded by Christian neighbours, had no longer a crusade to 
justify its claims. Popes ceased to send their blessing to the 
Grand Master, and talked instead of the possibilities of suppres- 
sion ; while tales of immorality and avarice such as had pursued 
the Templars were everywhere whispered into willing ears. 

Within their own territory also the influence of the Knights 
was waning ; for the very nature ^of their vows made their rule 
merely a military domination ; and, once the fear of heathen 
invasion had been removed, German colonists began to resent 
this. Condemned to celibacy, the Knights could train up no 
hereditary successors in sympathy from childhood with the needs 
of the Baltic province ; but, as they grew old and died, they must 
yield place instead to recruits from distant parts of Germany, who 
could only learn anew by their own experience the manners 
and traditions of those whom they governed. 

In the stress of these new conditions the good work that the 
Teutonic Order had done in saving North Germany from 
barbarism was forgotten. Weakened by disaffection within her 
own state, she fell an inevitable victim to Polish enmity, and at 
the battle of Tannenberg her Grand Master and many of her 
leading Knights were slain. The daring and determination of 
those who remained prevented the full fruits of this victory from 
being reaped until 1466, when, by the Treaty of Thorn, Poland 
received the whole of western Prussia, including the important 
town of Danzig, that gave her the long-coveted control of the 
Vistula and a Baltic seaport, beside hemming her enemies into 
the narrow strip of eastern Prussia. 



Louis £ the Great ' 293 

Poland's southern neighbour was the kingdom of Hungary, 
with which she had been for a short time united under Louis 
' the Great ', ' the Banner-bearer of the Church ' as he was styled 
by a grateful Pope for his victories over the Mahometans. 
Besides fighting against the Turks, Louis had other military 
irons in the fire. One of his ambitions was to dominate Eastern 
Europe, and with this object he was continually attacking and 
weakening the Serbian Empire, that appeared likely to be his 
chief rival. He also fought with the Venetians for the mastery 
of the Dalmatian coast, while we shall see in a later chapter that 
he aimed at becoming King of Naples on the murder of his 
brother Prince Andrew, husband of Joanna I. 

So successful was Louis in his war against the Venetians that 
he was able to take from them Dalmatia and exact the promise 
of a large yearly tribute. This in itself was achievement enough 
to win him a reputation in Europe, for the 'Queen of the Adriatic' 
was a difficult foe to humble ; but Louis also gained public 
admiration by his enlightened rule. Recognizing how deeply 
his land was scarred by racial feuds, such as those of the Czechs 
and Magyars, that have carried their bitterness far into modern 
times, he set himself to think out equitable laws, which he endea- 
voured to administer with impartial justice, instead of favouring 
one race at the expense of another. He also made his court a 
centre of culture and learning, where his nobles might develop 
their wits and manners as well as their sword-arms. 

One of the chief supporters of Louis in this work of civilization 
was the Emperor Charles IV, whom we have noticed paying com- 
pliments to the citizens of Liibeck. The friendship lasted for 
several years, until some of the princes of the Empire, weary of 
Charles's rule, began to compare the two monarchs, one so slug- 
gish, the other a military hero, and to suggest that the overlord 
should be deposed in favour of the famous King of Hungary. 
Louis indignantly repudiated this plot ; but Charles, who would 
hardly have done the same in a like case, could not bring himself 
to believe him, and in his anger began petulantly to abuse the 
Queen Mother of Hungary, to whom he knew her son was 
devoted. This led to recriminations, and finally to a war, in 



294 Central and Northern Europe 

which Charles was so thoroughly beaten that he sued for peace ; 
and outward friendship was restored by the marriage of the 
Emperor's son, Sigismund of Luxemburg, with Louis's daughter 
Mary. 

When Louis died, Poland, that had never wholeheartedly 
submitted to his rule, gave itself, as we have seen, to King 
Jagello of Lithuania ; while the Hungarians, after some years of 
anarchy, chose Sigismund of Luxemburg as their king. 

The House of Luxemburg was in the later Middle Ages the 
chief rival of the Habsburgs, and provided the Empire with some 
of her most interesting rulers. One of these, the Emperor 
Henry VII, belongs to an earlier date than that with which we 
have just been dealing, for he was grandfather of Charles IV. 
He was a gallant and chivalrous knight, who, but for his unfor- 
tunate foreign policy, might have proved himself a good and 
wise king. 

Dante, the greatest of Italian poets, who lived in the days of 
Henry VII, made him his hero, and hoped that he would save 
the world by establishing a Ghibelline supremacy that would 
reform both Church and State. It was Henry VII's undoing 
that he believed with Dante that he had been called to this 
impossible mission ; and so he crossed the Alps to try his hand 
at settling Italian feuds. Germany saw him no more; for soon 
after his coronation at Rome he fell ill and died, poisoned, it is 
said, in the cup of wine given him by a priest at Mass. 

Discord now broke out in Germany, and it was not till 1348 
that another of the House of Luxemburg was chosen King of 
the Romans. This was Charles IV, a man of a very different type 
of mind to his grandfather. For Charles Italy had no lure: he 
only crossed the Alps because he realized that it increased the 
prestige of the ruler of Germany to be crowned as Emperor by 
the Pope, and he did not mind at all that he was received with- 
out any pomp or respect, only with suspicion and begging 
demands. As soon as the ceremony was over he hastened back 
to his own kingdom, turning a deaf ear to all Italian complaints 
and suggestions. 



The Golden Bull 295 

This hurried journey was certainly undignified for a world- 
Emperor ; but Charles, who had run away in his youth from the 
battle-field of Creci, was never a heroic figure. Neither the 
thought of glory nor of duty could stir his sluggish blood ; but 
as far as obvious things were concerned he had a good deal of 
common sense. At any rate, in sharing Rudolf I's conviction 
that Germany should come first in his thoughts he was wiser 
than his heroic grandfather. 

To the reign of Charles IV belongs the 'Golden Bull', a 
document so called from its bulla or seal. The ' Golden Bull ' 
set forth clearly the exact method of holding an imperial election. 
Hitherto much of the trouble in disputed elections had arisen 
because no one had been sure of the correct procedure, and so 
disappointed candidates, by arguing that something illegal had 
occurred, were able to refuse allegiance to the successful nominee. 
Now it was decided that there should be seven Electors— three 
archbishops and four laymen — and that the ceremony should 
always take place at Frankfort, the minority agreeing to be bound 
by the will of the majority. 

Besides these main clauses the ' Golden Bull ' secured to the 
seven Electors enormous privileges and rights of jurisdiction, 
thus raising them to a much higher social and political level than 
the other princes of Germany, who were merely represented in 
the Imperial Diet or Parliament. The Electors became, in 
fact, more influential than the Emperor himself, and Charles 
has often been blamed for handing over Germany to a feudal 
oligarchy. 

It is possible that he did not foresee the full results or 
permanence of the ' Golden Bull ', but was determined only to 
construct for the time being a workable scheme that would 
prevent anarchy. There is also the supposition that he was more 
interested in the position of the kingdom of Bohemia, his own 
hereditary possession, which he raised to the first place among 
the electing territories, than in the role of Emperor to which he 
had been chosen. Whatever Charles's real motive, it is at any 
rate clear that he had the sense to see that the Empire as it 
stood was an outworn institution, and thus to try and mould it 



296 Central and Northern Europe 

into a less fantastic form of government. Like Edward I of 
England and Philip IV of France, though without the genius 
of the one or the opportunities of the other, he stands for 
posterity as one of those rulers of Europe during whose reign 
their country was enabled to shake off some of its mediaeval 
characteristics. Charles wore the imperial crown longer than 
an)' of his predecessors without arousing serious opposition — 
a sign that, if not an original politician, he yet moved with his 
times towards a more Modern Age. 



Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 



The Perpetual League . 


1291 


Ladislas V of Poland . 


. 1386-1433 


Charles ' the Bold ' 


H33-77 


Treaty of Thorn . . 


1466 


Valdemar III ... 


I340-75 


Emperor Henry VII . 


. 1308-13 



XXI 

ITALY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 

When the ' Company of Death ' repulsed the German army 
of Frederick Barbarossa on the field of Legnano 1 it raised 
aloft before the eyes of Europe not only the banner of democracy 
but also of nationality. Others, as we have seen, followed these 
banners once displayed : the Swiss Cantons shook off the 
Habsburg yoke : the Flemish towns defied their counts and 
French overlords : the Hanse cities formed political as well as 
commercial leagues against Scandinavia : France, England, and 
Spain emerged, through war and anarchy, modern states 
conscious of a national destiny. 

This slow evolution of nations and classes is the history of the 
later Middle Ages ; but in Italy there is no steady progress to 
record ; rather, a retrogression that proves her early efforts to 
secure freedom were little understood even by those who made 
them. 

Frederick II had ruled Lombardy in the thirteenth century 
through tyrants ; but, long after the Hohenstaufen had dis- 
appeared, and the quarrels of Welfs and Waiblingen had 
dwindled into a memory in Germany, the feuds of Guelfs and 
Ghibellines were still a monstrous reality in towns south of the 
Alps, where petty despots enslaved the Communes and reduced 
the country to perpetual warfare. 

At length from this welter of lost hopes and evil deeds there 
emerged, not Italy a nation, but five Italian states of pre- 
eminence in the peninsula, namely, Milan, Venice, Florence, 
Naples, and Rome. Each was more jealous of the other than 
of foreign intervention, so that on the slightest pretext one 
would appeal to France to support her ambitions, another to 

1 See p. 179. 



298 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

Spain or the Empire, and yet a third to Hungary or the Greeks. 
If Italy, as a result, became at a later date 'the cockpit of 
Europe ', where strangers fought their battles and settled their 




fortunes, it was largely her lack of any national foresight in 
mediaeval times that brought on her this misery. 

The history of Milan, first as a Commune fighting for her 
own liberty and destroying her neighbour's, then as the battle- 
ground of a struggle between two of her chief families, and finally 
as the slave of the victor, is the tale of many a north Italian 



The Visconti 299 

town, only that position and wealth gave to the fate of this 
famous city a more than local interest. 

The lords of Milan in the fourteenth and early fifteenth 
centuries were the Visconti, typical tyrants of the Italy of their 
day, quick with their swords, but still more ready with poison or 
a dagger, profligate and luxurious, patrons of literature and art, 
bad enemies and still worse friends, false and cruel, subtle as the 
serpent they so fittingly bore as an emblem. No bond but fear 
compelled their subject's loyalty, and deliberate cruelty to 
inspire fear they had made a part of their system. 

Bernabo Visconti permitted no one but himself to enjoy the 
pleasures of the chase ; but for this purpose he kept some five 
thousand savage hounds fed on flesh, and into their* kennels his 
soldiers cast such hapless peasants as had accidentally killed 
their lord's game or dared to poach on his preserves. 

No sense of the sanctity of an envoy's person disturbed 
this grim Visconti's sense of humour, when he demanded of 
messengers sent by the Pope with unpleasant tidings whether 
they would rather drink or eat. As he put the question he 
pointed towards the river, rushing in a torrent beneath the 
bridge on which he stood, and the envoys, casting horrified eyes 
in that direction, replied, ' Sir, we will eat.' ' Eat this, then/ 
said Bernabo sternly, handing them the papal letter with its 
leaden seals and thick parchment, and before they left his 
presence the whole had been consumed. 

Galeazzo Visconti, an elder brother of Bernabo, bore an even 
worse reputation for cruelty. Those he condemned to death 
had their suffering prolonged on a deliberate programme during 
forty-one days, losing now an eye, and now a foot or a hand, 
were beaten, forced to swallow nauseous drinks, and then, when 
the agony could be prolonged no further, broken on the wheel. 
The scene of this torture was a scaffold set in the public gaze that 
Milan might read what was the anger of the Visconti and 
tremble. 

The most famous of this infamous family was Gian Galeazzo, 
son of Galeazzo, a youth so timid by nature that he would shake 
and turn white at the sudden closing of a door, or at a noise in 



300 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

the street below. His uncle, Bernabo, believed him half-witted, 
and foolishly accepted an invitation to visit him after his father's 
death, intending to manage the young man's affairs for him 
and to keep him in terrified submission. The wily old man was 
to find himself outmatched, however, for Gian Galeazzo came to 
their meeting-place with an armed guard, arrested his uncle, 
and imprisoned him in a castle, where he died by slow poison. 

After this Gian Galeazzo reigned alone in Milan, with no law 
save his ruthless ambition ; and by this and his skill in creating 
political opportunities, and making use of them at his neighbour's 
expense, he succeeded in stretching his tyranny over the plains 
of Lombardy and southwards amongst the hill cities of Tuscany. 
Near at home he beat down resistance by force of arms, while 
farther away he secured by bribery or fraud the allegiance of 
cities too weak to stand alone, yet less afraid of distant Milan 
than of Venice or Florence that lay nearer to their walls. 

It was Gian Galeazzo's aim to found a kingdom in North Italy, 
and he went far towards realizing his project, stretching his 
dominion at one time to Verona and Vicenza at the very gates 
of Venice, while in the south he absorbed as subject-towns Pisa 
and Siena, the two arch-enemies of Florence. This territory, 
acquired by war, bribery, murder, and fraud, he persuaded the 
Emperor to recognize as a duchy hereditary in his family, and 
at once proceeded to form alliances with the royal houses of 
Europe. The marriage of his daughter Valentina with the young 
and weak-minded Duke of Orleans, brother of the French king, 
though hardly an attractive union for the bride, proved fraught 
with importance for the whole of Italy, since at the very end 
of the. fifteenth century, Louis, Duke of Orleans, a grandson of 
Valentina Visconti, succeeded to the French crown as Louis XII, 
and also laid claim to the duchy of Milan, as a descendant of 
the Visconti. 1 

At first sight it seems strange that any race so cruel and 
unprincipled as the Visconti should continue to maintain their 
tyranny over men and women naturally independent like the 
inhabitants of North Italy. Certainly, if their rulers had been 

1 See Genealogical Tabic, p. 379. 



The c Condottieri ' System' 301 

forced to rely on municipal levies they would not have kept their 
power even for a generation ; but unfortunately the old plan of 
expecting every citizen of military age to appear at the sound of 
a bell in order to defend his town had practically disappeared. 
Instead the professional soldier had taken the citizen's place — 
the type of man who, as long as he received high wages and 
frequent booty, did not care who was his master, nor to what 
ugly job of carnage or intimidation he was bidden to bring his 
sword. 

This system of hiring soldiers, condottieri, as they were called 
in Italy, had arisen partly from the laziness of the townsmen 
themselves, who did not wish to leave their business in order to 
drill and fight, and were therefore quite willing to pay volunteers 
to serve instead of them. Partly it was due to the reluctance 
of tyrants to arm and employ as soldiers the people over whom 
they ruled. From the point of view of the Visconti, for instance, 
it was much safer to enrol strangers who would not have any 
patriotic scruples in carrying out a massacre, or any other orders 
equally harsh. 

For such ruffians Italy herself supplied a wide recruiting- 
ground, namely, the numberless small towns, once independent 
but now swallowed up by bigger states, who treated the conquered 
as perpetual enemies to be bullied and suppressed; allowing 
them no share in the government nor voice in their future 
destiny. Wide experience has taught the world that such 
tyranny breeds merely hatred and disloyalty, and the continual 
local warfare from which mediaeval Italy suffered could be largely 
traced to the failure to recognize this political truth. With no 
legitimate outlet for their energies, the young men of the con- 
quered towns found in the formation of a company of adventurers, 
or in the service of some prince, the only path to renown, pos- 
sibly a way of revenge. 

To Italian condottieri were added German soldiers whom 
Emperors visiting Italy had brought in their train, and who after- 
wards remained behind, looking on the cities of Italy as a happy 
hunting-ground for loot and adventure. Yet a third source of 
supply were freebooters from France, released by one of the 



302 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

truces of the Hundred Years' War, and hastily sent by those 
who had employed them to seek their fortunes elsewhere. 

Amongst those who came to Italy in the fourteenth century, 
and built for himself a name of terror and renown, was an English 
captain, Sir John Hawkwood, the son of an Essex tailor, knighted 
by Edward III for his prowess on the battle-fields of France. 
Here is what a Florentine chronicler says of him : 

' He endured under arms longer than any one, for he endured 
sixty years : and he well knew how to manage that there should 
be little peace in Italy in his time .... For men and Communes 
and all cities live by peace, but these men live and increase 
by war, which is the undoing of cities, for they fight and become 
of naught. In such men there is neither love nor faith.' 

One tale of the day records how some Franciscans, meeting 
Sir John Hawkwood, exclaimed as was their custom, ' Peace 
be with you.' To their astonishment he answered, 'God take 
away your alms.' When they asked him the reason for wishing 
them so ill, he replied, ' You also wished that God might make 
me die of hunger. Know you not that I live on war, and that 
peace would ruin me? I therefore returned your greeting in 
like sort.' 

Sir John Hawkwood spent most of his time in the service 
of Florence ; and, whatever his cruelty and greed, he does not 
seem to have been as false as other captains of his time. Indeed, 
when he died, the Florentines buried him in their cathedral, and 
raised an effigy in grateful memory of his deeds on behalf of 
the city. 

Returning to the history of Milan and her condottieri, Gian 
Galeazzo, though timid and unwarlike himself, was a shrewd 
judge of character, and his captains, while they struck terror 
into his enemies, remained faithful to himself. When he died 
in 1402, however, many of them tried to establish independent 
states ; and it was some years before his son, Filippo Maria, 
could master them and regain control over the greater part of 
the Duchy. 

Even more cowardly than his father, Filippo Maria lived, like 
Louis XI of France, shut off from the sight of men. Sismondi, 
the historian, describes him as 'a strange, dingy, creature, with 



Venice 303 

protruding eyeballs and furtive glance '. He hated to hear the 
word 'death' mentioned, and for fear of assassination would 
change his bedroom every night. When news was brought him 
of defeat he would tremble in the expectation that his condottieri 
might desert him : when messengers arrived flushed with victory 
he was scarcely less aghast, believing that the successful general 
might become his rival. 

Such was the penalty paid by despots, save by those of iron 
nerve, in return for their luxury and power : the dread that the 
most servile of condottieri might be bribed into a relentless 
enemy, poison lurk in the seasoned dish or wine-cup, a dagger 
pierce the strongest mesh of a steel tunic. So night and day 
was the great Visconti haunted by fear, while his hired armies 
forced Genoa to acknowledge his suzerainty, and plunged his 
Duchy into rivalry with Venice along the line of the River Adige. 

The history of Venice differs in many ways from that of other 
Italian states. Built on a network of islands that destined her 
geographically for a great sea-power, she had looked from earliest 
times not to territorial aggrandisement, but to commercial ex- 
pansion for the satisfaction of her ambitions. In this way she 
had avoided the strife of feudal landowners, and even the Guelf 
and Ghibelline factions that had reduced her neighbours to 
slavery. 

Elsewhere in Italy the names of cities and states are bound 
up with the histories of mediaeval families; Naples with the 
quarrels of Hohenstaufen, Angevins, and Aragonese : Rome 
with the Barons of the Campagna, the Orsini and Colonna : 
Milan with the Visconti, and later with the Sforza : Florence 
with the Medici: but in Venice the state was everything, 
demanding of her sons and daughters not the startling qualities 
and vices of the successful soldier of fortune, but obedience, 
self-effacement, and hard work. 

The Doge, or Duke, the chief magistrate of Venice, has been 
compared to a king ; but he was in reality merely a president 
elected for life, and that by a system rendered as complicated 
as possible in order to prevent wire-pulling. Once chosen and 



304 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

presented to the people with the old formula, 'This is your 
Doge an' it please you ! ' the, new ruler of the city found himself 
hedged about by a hundred constitutional checks, that compelled 
him to act only on the well-considered advice of his six Ducal 
Councillors, forbade him to raise any of his family to a public 
office or to divest himself of a rank that he might with years 
find more burdensome than pleasant. He was also made aware 
that the respect with which his commands were received was 
paid not to himself but to his office, and through his office to 
Venice, a royal mistress before whom even a haughty aristocracy 
willingly bent the kne.e. 

In early days all important matters in Venice were decided 
by a General Assembly of the people ; but as the population 
grew, this unwieldy body was replaced by a 'Grand Council' 
of leading citizens. In the early fourteenth century another 
and still more important change was made, for the ranks of the 
Grand Council were closed, and only members of those families 
who had been in the habit of attending its meetings were allowed 
to do so in future. Thus a privileged aristocracy was created, 
and the majority of Venetians excluded from any share in their 
government; but because this government aimed not at the 
advantage of any particular family but of the whole state, people 
forgave its despotic character. Even the famous Council of Ten 
that, like the Court of Star Chamber under the Tudors, had 
power to seize and examine citizens secretly, in the interests of 
the state, was admired by the Venetians over whom it exerted its 
sway, because of its reputation for even-handed justice, that 
drew no distinctions between the son of a Doge, a merchant, or 
a beggar. ' The Venetian Republic ', says a modern writer on 
mediaeval times, 'was the one stable element in all North Italy,' 
and this condition of political calm was the wonder and admira- 
tion of contemporaries. 

Sometimes to-day it seems difficult to admire mediaeval Venice 
because of her selfishness and frank commercialism. She had 
no sense of patriotism either towards Italy or Christendom ; 
witness the Fourth Crusade, 1 where nothing but her insistent 

1 See p. 184. 



Venice 305 

desire to protect her trading position in the East had influenced 
her diplomacy. 

This accusation of selfishness is true ; but we must remember 
that the word 'patriotism' has a much wider scope in modern 
times than was possible to the limited outlook of the Middle 
Ages. Venice might be unmoved by the words ' Italy ' or 
' Christendom ', but the whole of her life and ideals was centred 
in the word ' Venice '. Her sailors and merchants, who laid the 
foundations of her greatness, were no hired mercenaries, but 
citizens willing to lay down their lives for the Republic who was 
their mother and their queen. Thus narrowing the term 
' patriotism ', we see that of all the Italian Powers Venice alone 
understood what the word meant, in that her sons and daughters 
were willing to sacrifice as a matter of course not merely life but 
family ambitions, class, and even individuality to the interests of 
their state. 

The ambitions of Venice were bound up with the shipping and 
commerce that had gained for her the carrying-trade of the world. 
To take, for example, the wool manufacture, of such vital interest 
to English and Flemings, we find that at one time this depended 
largely on Venetian merchants, who would carry sugar and spices 
to England from the East, replace their cargo with wool, unload 
this in its turn in the harbours of Flanders, and then laden with 
bales of manufactured cloth return to dispose of them in Italian 
markets. 

Besides the carrying-trade, which depended on her neighbour's 
industry, Venice had her own manufactures such as silk and 
glass ; but in either case both her sailors and workmen found 
one thing absolutely vital to their interests, namely, the command 
of the Adriatic. Like the British Isles to-day, Venice could not 
feed her thriving population from home-produce, and yet, with 
enemies or pirates hiding along the Dalmatian coast, safety for 
her richly-laden vessels passing to and fro could not be 
guaranteed. These are some of the reasons why from earliest 
times the Republic had embarked on an aggressive maritime 
policy that brought her into clash with other Mediterranean 
ports, and especially with Genoa, her rival in Eastern waters. 



306 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

When, at the end of the Fourth Crusade, Venice forced 
Constantinople to accept a Latin dynasty, she secured for her- 
self for the time being especial privileges in that world-market ; 
Genoa, who adopted the cause of the exiled Greeks, achieved 
a signal triumph in her turn when in 1261 with her assistance 
Michael Paleologus, a Greek general, restored the Byzantine 
Empire amid public rejoicings. 

Open warfare was now almost continuous between the 
republics ; there was street-fighting in Constantinople and in the 
ports of Palestine, sea-battles off the Italian and Greek coasts, 
encounters in which varying fortunes gave at first the mastery 
of the Mediterranean to neither Venice nor Genoa, but which 
disastrously weakened the whole resistance of Christendom to 
the Mahometans. 

At length in 1380 a decisive battle was fought off Chioggia, 
one of the cities of the Venetian Lagoons, whither the Genoese 
fleet, triumphant on the open seas, had taken up its quarters 
determined to blockade the enemy into surrender. 'Let us man 
every vessel in Venice and go and fight the foe ', was the general 
cry ; and a popular leader, Pisani, imprisoned on account of his 
share in a recent naval disaster, was released on the public 
demand and made captain of the enterprise. ' Long live Pisani ! ' 
the citizens shouted in their joy, but their hero, true to the spirit 
of Venice, answered them, ' Venetians cry only, " Long live 
St. Mark ! " ' 

With the few ships and men at his disposal, Pisani recognized 
that it was out of the question to lead a successful attack ; but 
he knew that if he could defer the issue there was a Venetian 
fleet in the eastern Mediterranean which, learning his straits, 
would return with all possible speed to his aid. He therefore 
determined to force the enemy to remain where they were with- 
out offering open battle, and this manoeuvre he carried out with 
great boldness and skill, sinking heavy vessels loaded with stones 
in the channels that led to Chioggia, while placing his own fleet 
across the main entrance to prevent Genoese reinforcements. 
The blockaders were now blockaded ; and through long winter 
days and nights the rivals, worn out by their bitter vigil, starving 



Venice 307 

and short of ammunition, watched one another and searched the 
horizon anxiously. At length a shout arose, for distant sails 
had been sighted ; then as the Venetian flag floated proudly into 
view the shout of Pisani and his men became a song of triumph : 
the Republic was saved. Venice was not only saved from ruin, 
her future as Queen of the Adriatic was assured, for the Genoese 
admiral was compelled to surrender, and his Republic to 
acknowledge her rival's supremacy of the seas. 

The sea-policy of Venice was the inevitable result of her 
geographical position ; but as the centuries passed she developed 
a much more debatable land-policy. Many mediaeval Venetians 
declared that since land was the source of all political trouble, 
therefore Venice should only maintain enough command over the 
immediate mainland to secure the city from a surprise attack. 
Others replied that such an argument was dictated by narrow- 
minded prejudice, a point of view suitable to the days when 
Lombardy had been divided amongst a number of weak city- 
states, but impracticable with powerful tyrants, such as the 
Visconti, masters of North Italy. Unless Venice could secure 
the territories lying at the foot of the Alps, and also a wide 
stretch of eastern Lombardy, she would find that she had no 
command over the passes in the mountains by means of which 
she carried on her commerce with Germany and Austria. 

The advocates of a land- empire policy received confirmation 
of their warnings when in the early part of the fourteenth 
century Mastino della Scala,lord of Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso, 
attempted to levy taxes on Venetian goods passing through his 
territories. The Republic, roused by what she considered an 
insult to her commercial supremacy, promptly formed a league 
with Milan and Florence against Mastino, and obtained Treviso 
and other towns as the result of a victorious war. 

This campaign might, of course, be called merely a part of 
Venice's commercial policy, defence not aggression ; but later, 
in 1423, the Florentines persuaded the Republic to join with 
them in a war against the Visconti, declaring that they were 
weary of struggling alone against such tyrants, and that if 
Venice did not help them they would be compelled to make 

x 2 



308 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

Filippo Maria ' King of North Italy.' The result of the war that 
followed was a treaty securing Venice a temporary increase of 
power on the mainland, and may be taken as the first decisive step 
in her deliberate scheme of building up a land-empire in Italy. 

Machiavelli, a student of politics in the sixteenth century, who 
wrote a handbook of advice for rulers called The Prince, as well 
as the history of Florence, his native city, declares that the de- 
cline of the Venetians ' dated from the time when they became 
ambitious of conquests by land and of adopting the manners and 
customs of the other states of Italy '. This may be true ; but it 
is doubtful whether the great Republic could have remained in 
glorious isolation with the Visconti knocking at her gates. 

From Venice we must turn to Florence, which, by the 
fifteenth century, emerged from petty rivalries as the first city 
in Tuscany. Like Milan, Florence fell a prey to Guelfs and 
Ghibellines ; but these feuds, instead of becoming a family rivalry 
between would-be despots, developed into a bitter class-war. 

On the fall of Frederick II the Guelfs, who in Florence at 
this date may be taken as representing the populo grasso, or rich 
merchants, as opposed to the grandi, or nobles, succeeded in 
driving the majority of their enemies out of the city. They then 
remodelled the constitution in their own favour. 

The chief power in the city was now the 'Signory', composed of 
the 'Gonfalonier of Justice' and a number of 'Priors', repre- 
sentatives of the arti } or guilds of lawyers, physicians, clothiers, 
&c. : to name but a few. No aristocrat might stand for any public 
office unless he became a member of one of the guilds, and in 
order to ensure that he did not merely write down his name on 
their registers it was later enacted that every candidate for 
office must show proof that he really worked at the trade of 
the guild to which he claimed to belong. 

Other and sterner measures of proscription followed with 
successive generations. The noble who injured a citizen of 
lesser rank, whether on purpose or by accident, was liable to 
have his house levelled with the dust : the towers, from which 
in old days his ancestors had poured boiling oil or stones upon 



Florence 309 

their rivals, were reduced by law to a height that could be 
easily scaled ; in the case of a riot no aristocrat, however 
innocent his intentions, might have access to the streets. 
The grande was, in fact, both in regard to politics and justice, 
placed at such an obvious disadvantage that to ennoble an 
ambitious enemy was a favourite Florentine method of rendering 
him harmless. 

The Guelf triumph of the thirteenth century did not, in spite of 
its completeness, bring peace to Florence. New parties sprang 
up ; and the government in its efforts to keep clear of class or 
family influence introduced so many complicated checks that 
great injury was done to individual action, and all hope of 
a steady policy removed. Members of the 'Signory', for 
instance, served only for two months at a time : the twelve 
' Buonomini ', or ' Good men ', elected to give them advice only 
for six. What was most in contrast to the ideal of ' the right 
man for the right job ' was the practice of first making a list of 
all citizens considered suitable to hold office, then putting the 
names in a bag, and afterwards picking them out haphazard as 
vacancies occurred. Even this precaution against favouritism — 
and, one is inclined to add, also against efficiency — was checked 
by another law, the summoning of a parlamento in cases of 
emergency. This parlamento was an informal gathering of the 
people collected by the ringing of a bell in the big square, where it 
was then asked to decide whether a special committee should be 
appointed with free power to alter the existing constitution. 
Politicians argued that here in the last resort was a direct appeal 
to the people, but in reality by placing armed men at the 
entrances to the square a docile crowd could be manoeuvred 
at the mercy of any mob-orator set up by those behind the 
scenes. 

Power remained in Florence in the hands of the prosperous 
burghers and merchants, and these in time developed their own 
feuds under the names of ' Whites ' and ' Blacks ', adopted by 
the partisans in a family quarrel. 

The greatest of Italian poets, Dante Alighieri, was a ' White ', 
and was exiled from his city in 1302 owing to the triumph of his 



3 to Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

rivals. When pardon was suggested on the payment of a large 
sum of money, Dante, who had tried to serve his city faithfully, 
refused to comply, feeling that this would be an open acknow- 
ledgement of his guilt. ' If another way can be found . . . which 
shall not taint Dante's fame and honour', he wrote proudly, 
' that way I will accept and with no reluctant steps . . . but if 
Florence is not to be entered by any such way never will I enter 
Florence.' 

Dante's mental outlook was typical of mediaeval times in its 
stern prejudices and hatreds, but it was also clearer and nobler 
in its scope. An enthusiastic Ghibelline in politics, he believed 
that it was the first duty of Holy Roman Emperors to exert their 
authority over Italy, but this vision was not narrowed, as with 
many Italians, into the mere hope of restoration to home and 
power, with a sequel of revenge on private enemies. Dearer to 
Dante than any personal ambitions was the desire for the 
salvation of both Church and state from tyranny and corruption ; 
and this he believed could only be achieved by bestowing 
supreme power on a world-emperor. 

One attempt at reform had been made in 1294, when the 
conclave of Cardinals, suddenly stung with the contrast between 
the character of the Catholic Church and its professions, chose 
as their Vicar a hermit noted for his privations and holy life. 
Celestine V, as he was afterwards called, was a small man, pale 
and feeble, with tousled hair and garments of sackcloth. When 
a deputation of splendidly dressed cardinals came to find him, he 
fled in terror, and it was almost by force that he was at last 
persuaded to go with them and put on the pontifical robes. The 
men and women who longed for reform now waited eagerly for 
this new Pope's mandates ; but their expectations were doomed 
to failure. Celestine V had neither the originality nor the 
strength of will to withstand his change of fortunes. Terrified- 
by his surroundings, he became an easy prey to those who were 
unscrupulous and ambitious, giving away benefices sometimes 
twice over because he dared not refuse them to importunate 
courtiers, and creating new cardinals almost as fast as he 
was asked to do so. At last he was allowed to abdicate, 



Dante Alighieri 3 1 1 

and hurried back to his cell, but only to be seized by his suc- 
cessor, the fierce Boniface VIII, 1 and shut up in a castle, where 
he died. 

Dante hated Boniface as a ruler who debased his spiritual 
opportunities in order to obtain material rewards, but he had 
hardly less scorn for Celestine V, who was given power to reform 
the Church of Christ and 'made the great refusal '. Reform, in 
the Florentine's eyes, could not be looked for from Rome, but, 
when the Emperor Henry VII crossed the Alps, 2 his hopes rose 
high that here at last was the saviour of Italy, and it is probable 
that at this time the poet wrote his political treatise called the De 
Monarchia, embodying his views. He himself went out to meet 
his champion, but Henry was not destined to be a second 
Charlemagne or Otto the Great, and his death closed all 
expectations built on his chivalrous character and ideals. 

Dante's greatest work is his long poem the Divina Commedia, 
divided into three parts, the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the 
Paradiso. It tells how on Good Friday of the year of Jubilee 
1300 the Florentine, meeting with the spirit of Virgil whom he had 
chosen as his master, was led by him through the realms 
of everlasting punishment and of penance, and from there was 
borne by another guide, Beatrice, the idealized vision of a woman 
he had loved on earth, up through the ' Nine Heavens ' to the very 
throne of God. As a summary of mediaeval theories as to the 
life eternal, and also as the reflection of a fourteenth-century 
mind on politics of the day, the Divine Comedy is indeed 
an historical treasury as well as a masterpiece of Italian literature. 
It is, however, a great deal more — the revelation of the develop- 
ment of a human soul. Dante's journey is told with a mastery 
of atmosphere and detail that holds our imaginations to-day with 
the sense of reality. It was obviously still more real to himself 
and expresses the agonized endeavour of a soul, alive to the 
corruption and nerve-weariness of the world around him, to find 
the way of salvation, a pilgrimage crowned at last by the 
realization of a Civitas Dei so supreme in its beauty and peace as 
to surpass the prophecies of St. Augustine. 

1 See p. 230. 2 See p. 294. 



312 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

Now 'Glory to the Father, to the Son, 
And to the Holy Spirit' rang aloud 
Throughout all Paradise ; that with the song 
My spirit reel'd, so passing sweet the strain. 
And what I saw was equal ecstasy : 
One universal smile it seemed of all things; 
Joy past compare ; gladness unutterable ; 
Imperishable life of peace and love ; 
Exhaustless riches and unmeasured bliss. 

Dante himself did not live to fulfil his earthly dream of return- 
ing to Florence, but died at Ravenna in 1321. On his tomb is 
an inscription in Latin containing the words, ' Whom Florence 
bore, the mother that did little love him ' ; while his portrait has 
the proud motto so typical of his whole life, ' I yield not to 
misfortune '. In later centuries Florence recalled with shame her 
repudiation of this the greatest of her sons; but while he lived, 
and for some years after his death, political prejudices blinded 
her eyes. In the Emperor Henry VII, to whom Dante referred 
as ' King of the earth and servant of God ', Florence saw an 
enemy so hateful that she was willing to forgo her boasted 
democracy, and to accept as master any prince powerful enough 
to oppose him. Thus she granted the Signoria, or ' overlordship ' 
of the city, for five years to King Robert of Naples, the head of 
the Guelf party in Italy during the early years of the fourteenth 
century. 

King Robert of Naples was a grandson of Charles, Count 
of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, and, true to the tradition of his 
house, stood as the champion of the Popes against imperial 
claims over Italy. Outwardly he was by far the most powerful 
of the Italian princes of his day ; but in reality he sat uneasily 
on his throne. The Neapolitans had not learned with time 
to love their Angevin rulers, but even after the death of Conradin 
remembered the Hohenstaufen, and envied Sicily that dared to 
throw off the French yoke and give herself to a Spanish 
dynasty. 

It is difficult to provide a short and at the same time connected 
account of the history of Naples from the death of King Robert 



Naples 3 1 3 

in 1343 until 1435, when it was conquered by the House of 
Aragon. For nearly a century there is a dismal record of murders 
and plots, with scarcely an illuminating glimpse of patriotism or 
of any heroic figure. It is like a ' dance of death ', with ever- 
changing partners, and nothing achieved save crimes and 
revolutions. 

King Robert's successor was a granddaughter, Joanna I, 
a political personage from her cradle, and married at the age of 
five to a boy cousin two years her senior, Andrew of Hungary, 
brother of Louis the Great. We cannot tell if, left to themselves, 
this young couple, each partner so passionate and self-willed, 
could have learned to work together in double harness. What 
is certain is that no one in that corrupt court gave them the 
chance, one party of intriguers continually whispering in Joanna's 
ear that as queen it was beneath her dignity to accept any inter- 
ference from her husband, while their rivals reminded the young 
Prince Andrew that he was descended from King Robert's 
elder brother, and therefore had as great a right to the throne as 
his wife. Frequent quarrels as to whose will should prevail shook 
the council-chamber, and then at last came tragedy. 

In 1345 Joanna and Andrew, then respectively eighteen and 
twenty, set out together into the country on an apparently 
amicable hunting-expedition. As they slept one night in the 
guest-room of a convent the Prince heard himself called by 
voices in the next room. Suspecting no harm he rose and went 
to see which of his friends had summoned him, only to find him- 
self attacked by a group of armed men. He turned to re-enter 
the bedroom, but the door was locked behind him. With the 
odds now wholly against him, Andrew fought bravely for his life, 
but at length two of his assassins succeeded in throwing a rope 
round his neck, and with this they strangled him and hung his 
body from the balcony outside. 

Attendants came at last, and, forcing the door, told Joanna of 
the murder; on which she declared that she had been so soundly 
asleep that she had heard nothing, though she was never able 
to explain satisfactorily how in that case the door of her bed- 
room had become locked behind the young king. Naturally the 



3 H Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

greater part of Europe believed that she was guilty of connivance 
in the crime, and King Louis of Hungary brought an army to 
Italy to avenge his brother's death. He succeeded in driving 
Joanna from Naples, which he claimed as his rightful inheritance, 
but he was not sufficiently supported to make a permanent 
conquest, and in the end he was forced to hurry away to 
Hungary, where his throne was threatened, leaving the question 
of his sister-in-law's guilt to be decided by the Pope. 

The Pope at this time looked to the Angevin rulers of Naples 
as his chief supporters, and at once proclaimed Joanna innocent. 
It is worthy of note that three princes were found brave enough 
to become her husband in turn ; but, though four times married, 
Joanna had but one son, who died as a boy. 

At first she was quite willing to accept as her heir a cousin, 
Charles of Durazzo, who was married to her niece, but soon she 
had quarrelled violently with him and offered the throne instead 
to a member of the French royal house, Louis, Duke of Anjou. 
This is a very bewildering moment for students of history, because 
it introduces into Italian politics a second Angevin dynasty only 
distantly connected with the first, yet both laying claim to 
Naples and waging war against one another as if each belonged 
to a different race. 

Joanna in the end was punished for her capriciousness, for in 
the course of the civil wars she had introduced she fell into the 
hands of Charles of Durazzo, who, indignant at his repudiation, 
shut her up in a castle, where she died. One report says that 
she was smothered with a feather-bed; another that she was 
strangled with a silken cord— perhaps in memory of Prince 
Andrew's murder. 

After this act of retribution, Charles of Durazzo maintained 
his power in Naples for four years, though he was forced to 
surrender the County of Provence to his Angevin rival. Not 
content with his Italian kingdom, he set off with an army to 
Hungary as soon as he heard of the death of Louis the Great, 
hoping to enforce his claims on that warrior's lands. Instead 
he was assassinated, and succeeded in Naples by his son 
Ladislas, a youth of fifteen. 



Naples 3 1 5 

Ladislas proved a born soldier of unflagging energy and 
purpose, so that he not only conquered his unruly baronage but 
made himself master of southern Italy, including Rome, from 
which with unusual Angevin hostility he drove the Pope. Here 
was a chance for bringing about the union of Italy under one 
ruler, and Ladislas certainly aimed at such an achievement, but 
apart from his military genius he was a typical despot of his 
day — cruel, unscrupulous, and pleasure-seeking as the Visconti — 
and when he died, still a young man, in 1414 few mourned his 
passing. 

His sister, Joanna II, who succeeded him, lacked his strength 
while exhibiting many of his vices. Like Joanna I she was 
false and fickle ; like Joanna I she had no direct heirs, so that 
the original House of Anjou in Naples came to an end when 
she died. Many negotiations as to her successor took place 
during the latter years of her reign, and for some time it seemed 
as if the old queen would be content to accept Louis III of 
Anjou, at this time the representative of the Second Angevin 
House, but in a moment of caprice and anger she suddenly 
bestowed her favour instead on Alfonso V of Aragon and Sicily, 
and adopted him as her heir. Of course, being Joanna, she 
again changed her mind ; but, though Alfonso pretended to 
accept his repudiation, the hard-headed Spaniard was not to be 
turned so easily from an acquisition that would forward Aragonese 
ambitions in the Mediterranean. 

Directly Joanna II died, Alfonso appeared off Naples with 
a fleet, and though he was taken prisoner in battle and sent as 
a prisoner to Filippo Maria Visconti at Milan, he acted with 
such diplomacy that he persuaded that despot, hitherto an ally 
of the Angevins, that it was much safer for Milan to have 
a Spanish rather than a French House reigning in Naples. 
This was the beginning of a firm alliance between Milan and 
Naples, for Alfonso, released from his captivity, succeeded in 
establishing himself in ' the Kingdom ', where withdrawing his 
court from Aragon he founded a new capital that became 
a centre for learned and cultured Italians as of old in the days 
of Frederick II. 



3 1 6 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

We have dealt now with four of the five principal Italian 
states during the later Middle Ages. In Rome, to pick up the 
political threads, we must go back to the effects of the removal 
of the papal court to Avignon in 1308. 1 

From the point of view of the Popes themselves, many of 
them Frenchmen by birth, there were considerable advantages 
to be gained by this change — not only safety from the invasions 
of Holy Roman Emperors aspiring to rule Italy, but also from 
the turbulence of Roman citizens and barons of the Campagna. 

Avignon was near enough to France to claim her king's 
protection, but far enough outside her boundaries to evade 
obedience to her laws. It stood in the County of Provence, part 
of the French estates of the Angevin House of Naples, but during 
her exile Joanna I, penniless and in need of papal support, 
was induced to sell the city, and it remained an independent 
possession of the Holy See until the eighteenth century. 

From the immediate advantages caused by the ' Babylonish 
Captivity ', as these years of papal residence in Avignon were 
called, we turn to the ultimate disadvantages, and these were 
serious. Inevitably there was a lowering of papal prestige in 
the eyes of Europe. In Rome, that since classic times had been 
the recognized capital of the Western world, the Pope had 
seemed indeed a world-wide potentate, on whom the mantle both 
of St. Peter and of the Caesars might well have fallen. Trans- 
ferred to a city of Provence he shrank almost to the measure of 
a petty sovereign. 

During the Hundred Years' War, for instance, there was 
widespread grumbling in England at the obedience owed to 
Avignon. The Popes, ran popular complaint, were more than 
half French in political outlook and sympathy, so that an English- 
man who wished for a successful decision to his suit in a papal 
law-court must pay double the sums proffered by men of any 
other race in order to obtain justice. What was more, he knew 
that any money he sent to the papal treasury helped to provide 
the sinews of war for his most hated enemies. 

The Papacy had been disliked across the Channel in the days 

1 See p. 232. 



Rome 317 

of Innocent IV, when England was taxed to pay for wars against 
the Hohenstaufen : now, more than a century later, grumbling 
had begun to crystallize in the dangerous shape of a resistance 
not merely to papal supremacy, but to papal doctrine on which 
that supremacy was based. Thus Wycliffe, the first great English 
heretic, who began to proclaim his views during the later years of 
Edward Ill's reign, was popularly regarded as a patriot, and his 
sermons denouncing Catholic doctrine widely read and discussed. 

In the thirteenth century it had been possible to suppress 
heresy in Languedoc ; but in the fourteenth century there were 
no longer Popes like Innocent III who could persuade men to 
fight the battles of Avignon, and so the practice of criticism and 
independent thought grew, and by the fifteenth century many 
of the doctrines taught by Wycliffe had spread across Europe 
and found a home in Bohemia. 

With the history of Bohemian heresy we shall deal later, 
but, having treated its development as partly arising from the 
change in papal fortunes, we must notice the effect of the 
Babylonish Captivity on Rome herself, and this, indeed, was 
disastrous. 

'The absence of the Pope', says Gregorovius, a modern 
German historian, 'left the nobility more unbridled than ever; 
these hereditary Houses now regarded themselves as masters 
of Rome left without her master. Their mercenaries encamped 
on every road ; travellers and pilgrims were robbed ; places of 
worship remained empty. The entire circumstances of the city 
were reduced to a meaner level. No prince, nobleman, or envoy 
of a foreign power, any longer made his appearance .... Vicars 
replaced the cardinals absent from their titular churches, while 
the Pope himself was represented in the Vatican, as by a shadow, 
by some bishop of the neighbourhood, Nepi, Viterbo, or Orvieto.' 

The wealth and pomp that had made the papal court a source 
of revenue to the Romans were transferred to Provence : the 
Orsini and Colonna battled in the streets with no High Pontiff 
to hold them in check. Only his agents remained, who were 
there mainly to collect his rents and revenues, so that the city 
seemed once again threatened with political extinction as when 
Constantine had removed his capital to the Bosporus, 



3 18 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

One short period of glory there was in seventy years of gloom — 
the realized vision of a Roman, Cola di Rienzi, a youth of the 
people, who, steeped in the writings of classical times, hoped to 
bring back to the city the freedom and greatness of republican 
days. From contemporary accounts Rienzi had a wonderful 
personality, striking looks, and an eloquence that rarely failed 
to move those who heard him. At Avignon, as a Roman envoy, 
he gained papal consent to some measures earnestly desired at 
Rome, and this success won him a large and enthusiastic fol- 
lowing amongst the citizens, who applauded all that he said, and 
offered to uphold his ambitions with their swords. 

The first step to the greatness of Rome was obviously to 
restore order to her streets, and Rienzi therefore determined to 
overthrow the nobles, who with their retainers were always 
brawling, and above all the proud family of Colonna, one of 
whom without any provocation had killed his younger brother 
in a fit of rage. 

The revolution took place in May 1347, when, with the Papal 
Vicar standing at his side, and banners representing liberty, 
justice, and peace floating above his head, Rienzi proclaimed 
a new constitution to the populace, and invested himself as chief 
magistrate with the title of 'Tribune, Illustrious Redeemer of 
the Holy Roman Republic'. 

At first there was laughter amongst the Roman nobles when 
they heard of this proclamation. ' If the fool provokes me 
further/ exclaimed Stephen Colonna, the head of that powerful 
clan, ' I will throw him from the Capitol' ; but his contempt was 
turned to dismay when he heard that a citizen army was guarding 
the bridges, and confining the aristocratic families to their houses. 
In the end Stephen fled to his country estates, while the younger 
members of his household came to terms with the Tribune, and 
swore allegiance to the new Republic. 

Rienzi was now triumphant, and his letters to all the rulers 
of Europe announced that Rome had found peace and law, while 
he exhorted the other cities of Italy to throw off the yoke of 
tyrants and join a 'national brotherhood '. 

It would seem that Rienzi alone of his contemporaries saw a 



Cola di Rienzi 319 

vision of a united Italy ; but unfortunately the common sense 
and balance that are necessary to secure the practical realization 
of a visionary's dreams were lacking. The Tribune was 
undoubtedly great, but not great enough to stand success. The 
child of peasants, he began to boast that he was really a son of 
the Emperor Henry VII, and the pageantry that he had first 
employed to dazzle the Romans grew more and more elaborate 
as he himself became ensnared by a false sense of his own dignity. 
Clad in a toga of white silk edged with a golden fringe, he would 
ride through the streets on a white horse, amid a calvacade of 
horsemen splendidly equipped. In order to celebrate his acces- 
sion to power he instituted a festival, where, amid scenes of 
lavish pomp, he was knighted in the Lateran with a golden girdle 
and spurs, after bathing in the porphyry font in which tradition 
declared that Constantine had been cleansed from leprosy. 

The people, as is the way with crowds, clapped their hands 
and shouted while the trumpets blew, and they scrambled for 
the gold Rienzi's servants threw broadcast ; but long afterwards, 
when they had forgotten the even-handed justice their Tribune 
had secured them, they remembered his foolish extravagance 
and display, and resented the taxes that he found it necessary to 
impose in order to maintain his government and state. 

The history of Rienzi's later years is a tale of brilliant oppor- 
tunities, created in the first place by his genius, and then lost by 
his timidity or lack of balance. On one occasion, when he learned 
that the very nobles who had sworn on oath to uphold his con- 
stitution were plotting its overthrow, he invited the leaders of 
the conspiracy to a banquet, arrested them, and sent them under 
guard to prison. The next morning the prison-bell tolled, and 
the nobles within were led out apparently to the death their 
treachery had richly deserved. At the last moment, however, 
when each had given up hope, the Tribune came before the 
scaffold, and, after a sermon on the forgiveness of sins, ordered 
those who were condemned to be set free. 

If he had wished to win their allegiance by this act of clemency 
Rienzi had ill-judged his enemies. They had disliked him before 
as a peasant upstart ; now they hated him far more bitterly as a 



320 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

man who had been able to humble them in the public gaze, 
believing, whether rightly or wrongly, that it was not forgiveness 
but fear of the powerful families to which they belonged that had 
finally moved him to mercy. From this moment the Orsini, the 
Colonna, and their friends had but one object in life — to pull the 
Tribune from his throne. By bribery and the spreading of false 
rumours they set themselves to undermine his influence, telling 
tales everywhere of his extravagance and luxury as contrasted 
with the heavy taxes, until at last in 1354 a tumult broke out in 
the city, and a mob collected that stormed the palace where 
Rienzi lodged, shouting ' Death to the Traitor ! ' As the Tribune 
attempted to escape he was seen against the flames of his burning 
walls and cut down. 

With the fall of Rienzi died the idea of a restored and reformed 
Italy through the medium of a Holy Roman Republic, just as 
Dante's hope of a new and more perfect Roman Empire had 
been shattered by the death of Henry VII. Was there then 
no hope for Italy in mediaeval minds ? The next answer that 
there was hope, indeed, came from Siena, one of the hill towns 
not far south of Florence, and its author was a peasant girl, 
Catherine Benincasa, who, like Jeanne d'Arc, looking round 
upon the misery of her country, believed that she was called by 
God to show her fellow countrymen the way of salvation. 

St. Catherine, for she was afterwards canonized, was one of 
the twenty-five children of a Sienese dyer, who was at first very 
angry that his daughter refused to marry and instead joined the 
Order of Dominican Tertiaries — that is, of women who, still 
remaining in their own homes, bound themselves by vows to 
obey a religious rule. 

In time, not only the dyer but all Siena came to realize that 
Catherine possessed a mind and spirit far above ordinary 
standards, so that, while in her simplicity she would accept the 
meanest household tasks, she had yet so great an understanding 
of the larger issues of life that she could read the cause of each 
man or woman's trouble who came to her, and suggest the remedy 
they needed to give them fresh courage or hope. 

During an outbreak of plague in Siena it was Catherine who, 



St. Catherine of Siena 321 

undismayed and tireless, went everywhere amongst the sick and 
dying, infusing new heart into the weary doctors and energy 
into patients succumbing helplessly to the disease. 

When one of the wild young nobles of the town was condemned 
to death according to the harsh law of the day for having dared 
to criticize his government, Catherine visited him in prison. She 
found him raging up and down his cell like some trapped wild 
animal, refusing all comfort; but her presence and sympathy 
brought him so great a sense of peace and even of thanksgiving 
that he went to the scaffold at last joyfully, we are told, calling 
it 'the holy place of justice'. Here, not shrinking from the 
scene of death itself, Catherine awaited him, kneeling before the 
block, and received his head in her lap when it was severed from 
his body. ' When he was at rest,' she wrote afterwards, showing 
what the strain had been, 'my soul also rested in peace and quiet.' 

St. Catherine was not alarmed when ambassadors from other 
cities, and even messengers from the Pope at Avignon, came to 
ask her advice on thorny problems. She believed that she was a 
messenger of God, 'servant and slave of the servants of Jesus 
Christ ', as she styled herself in her letters, and that God intended 
the regeneration of Italy to be brought about neither by Emperor, 
nor by a Holy Roman Republic, but by the Pope himself. No 
longer must he live at Avignon, but return to Rome, and, once 
established there, begin the work of reform so sorely needed both 
by Church and State. Then would follow a call to the world 
that, recognizing by his just and generous acts that he was indeed 
the ' Father of Christendom ', would joyfully come to offer its 
allegiance. 

This high ideal touched the hearts and imaginations of even 
the least spiritual of Catherine's contemporaries. One of her 
letters was addressed to that firebrand Sir John Hawkwood, 
whom she besought to turn his sword away from Italy against 
the Turks ; and it is said that on reading it he took an oath that 
if other captains would go on a crusade he would do so also. 

St. Catherine herself went to Avignon and saw Pope Gregory 
XI— a timid man, who loved luxury and peace of mind, fearing 
greatly the turbulence of Rome. At this time all the barons of 



322 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

the Campagna and most of the cities on the papal estates were 
up in arms, and Gregory had been warned that unless he went 
in person to pacify the combatants he was likely to lose all his 
temporal possessions. Catherine, when consulted, told him 
sternly that he should certainly return to Italy, but not for this 
reason. 

'Open the eyes of your intelligence/ she said, 'and look 
steadily at this matter. You will then see, Holy Father, that . . . 
it is more needful for you to win back souls than to reconquer 
your earthly possessions.' 

In January 1377 St. Catherine gained her most signal triumph, 
for Gregory XI, at her persuasion, appeared in Rome and took 
up his quarters there, so bringing to an end the ' Babylonish 
Captivity '. Not long afterwards he died ; and the Romans who 
had rejoiced at his coming were overwhelmed with fear that his 
successor might be a Frenchman and return to Avignon. ' Give 
us a Roman !.' they howled, surging round the palace where the 
College of Cardinals, or Consistory, as it was called, was holding 
the election ; and the cardinals, believing that they would be 
torn in pieces unless they at least chose an Italian, hastily elected 
a Neapolitan, the Archbishop of Bari, who took the name of 
Urban VI. 

It was an unfortunate choice. Urban honestly wished to 
reform the Church, but of Christian charity, without which good 
deeds are of no avail, he possessed nothing. Arrogant, passion- 
ate, and fierce in his frequent hatreds, blind to either tact or 
moderation, he tried to force the cardinals by threats and insults 
into surrendering their riches and pomp. ' I tell you in truth,' 
exclaimed one of them, when he had listened to the Pope's first 
fiery denunciations, 'you have not treated the Cardinals to-day 
with the respect they received from your predecessors. If you 
diminish our honour we shall diminish yours.' 

Rome was soon aflame with the plots of the rebellious college, 
whose members finally withdrew from the city, declared that 
they had been intimidated in their choice by the mob, that the 
election of Urban was therefore invalid, and that they intended 
to appoint some one else. As a result of this new conclave there 



The Great Schism 323 

appeared a rival Pope, Clement VII, who after a short civil 
war fled from Italy and took up his residence at Avignon. 

The period that followed is called the Great Schism, one of 
the times of deepest humiliation into which the papal power 
ever descended. From Rome and Avignon two sets of bulls, 
claiming divine sanction and the necessity of human obedience, 
went forth to Christendom, their authors each declaring himself 
the one lawful successor of St. Peter, and Father of the Holy 
Catholic Church. 

With Clement VII sided France, her ally Scotland, Spain, 
and Naples ; with Urban VI, Germany, England, and most ot 
the northern kingdoms ; and when these Popes died the 
cardinals they had elected perpetuated the schism by choosing 
fresh rivals to rend the unity of the Church. Thus in the 
struggle for temporal supremacy reform was forgotten, and the 
growing spirit of doubt and scepticism given a fair field in 
which to sow her seed. 

St. Catherine had realized her desire, the return of the Pope to 
Rome, only, we see, to find it fail in achieving the purpose for 
which she had prayed and planned. The 'Popes of the four- 
teenth century were men of the age in which they lived, not 
great souls like the saint of Siena herself, who called them to 
a task of which they were spiritually incapable. With her 
death her ideal faded, and another gradually took shape in the 
minds of men, namely, 'an appeal from the Vicar of Christ 
on earth to Christ Himself, residing in the whole body of the 
Church'. 

Christendom remembered that in the early days of her 
history it had been Councils of the Fathers, sitting at Nicea 
and elsewhere, that had defined the Faith and made laws for 
the Catholic Church. Now it was suggested that once more 
a large world-council should be called from every Catholic 
nation, composed of Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, the 
Heads of the Friars and of the Monastic and Military Orders, 
together with Doctors of Theology and Law. This council was 
to be given power by the whole of Christendom to end the 
schism, condemn heresy, and reform the Church. 

y 2 



324 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

The person who was chiefly responsible for the summoning 
of this council, that met at Constance in 1414, was Sigismund, 
King of the Romans, a son of the Emperor Charles IV, and 
brother and heir to the Emperor Wenzel, a drunken sot, who 
was also King of Bohemia, but quite incapable of playing an 
intelligent part in public affairs. Sigismund was King of 
Hungary by election and through his marriage with a daughter 
of Louis the Great l ; but his subjects had little respect for his 
ability, and were usually in a state of chronic rebellion. In spite 
of the fact that he had no money and had been decisively and in- 
gloriously defeated in battle by the Turks, he continued to hold 
high ambitions, desiring above all things to appear as the arbiter 
of European destinies who would reform both Church and State. 

The Council of Constance gave him his opportunity, and 
certainly no other man worked as hard to make it a success. 
Sometimes he presided in person at the meetings, which dragged 
out their weary discussions for about four years : at other times 
he would visit the courts of Europe, trying to persuade rival 
Popes to resign, or, if they were obstinate, civil sovereigns 
to refuse them patronage and protection. He even tried, though 
in vain, to act as mediator in the Hundred Years' War, in order 
that the political quarrels of French and English might not 
bring friction to the council board. 

It is unfortunate for Sigismund's memory that his share in 
the Council of Constance was marred by treachery. As heir 
to the throne of Bohemia and the incapable Wenzel he was 
often led to interfere in the affairs of that kingdom, and felt it 
his duty to take some steps with regard to the spread of 
Wycliffe's doctrines amongst his future subjects, especially in 
the national University of Prague. Here heretical views were 
daily expounded by a clever priest and teacher, John Huss. 
Now the orthodox Catholics in the university were mainly 
Germans, and hated by the ordinary Bohemians, who . were 
Slavs, and these therefore admired and followed Huss for 
national as well as from religious convictions. 

Sigismund agreed with Huss in desiring a drastic reform 
* See p. 294. and genealogy, p. 380. 



John Huss 325 

of the Church, suitable means for ensuring which he hoped to 
see devised at Constance. At the same time he trusted that 
the representatives of Christendom would come to some kind 
of a compromise with the Bohemian teacher on his religious 
views, and persuade him by their arguments to withdraw some 
of his most unorthodox opinions. With this end in view he 
therefore invited Huss to appear at the Council, offering him 
a safe-conduct. 

Many of the Bohemians suspected treachery and shook their 
heads when their national hero insisted that he was bound in 
honour to make profession of his faith when summoned. ' God 
be with you ! ' exclaimed one, ' for I fear greatly that you will 
never return to us.' This prophecy was fulfilled ; for Huss, 
when he arrived at Constance, found that Sigismund was 
absent, and the attitude of the Council definitely hostile to any- 
thing he might say. After a prolonged examination he was 
called upon to recant his errors, and, refusing to yield, was 
condemned to death as a heretic ; Sigismund, on his return to 
Constance shortly after this sentence had been passed, was 
persuaded that unless he consented to withdraw his safe-conduct 
the whole gathering would break up in wrath. 

Herod, he was told, had made a bad oath in agreeing to 
fulfil the wish of Herodias's daughter and should have refused 
her demand for the head of John the Baptist. To pledge faith 
to a heretic was equally wrong, for as an example and warning 
to Christendom all heretics should be burned. It was imperative 
therefore for the good of the Church that such a safe-conduct 
should be withdrawn. Sigismund at last sullenly yielded, 
conscious of the stain on his honour, yet still more fearful lest 
the council he had called together with so great an effort should 
melt away, its tasks unfulfilled, as his many enemies hoped. 

In July 1415 Huss was burned alive, crying aloud with stead- 
fast courage as those about him urged him to recant, ' Lo ! I am 
prepared to die in that truth of the Gospel which I taught and 
wrote.' Lest he should be revered as a martyr, the ashes of 
Huss were flung into the river, his very clothes destroyed ; 
but measures that had prevailed when an Arnold of Brescia 



326 Italy in the Later Middle Ages 

preached to a few, some two centuries before, were unavailing 
when a John Huss died for the faith of a nation. Sigismund 
kept his council together, but he paid for his broken word in 
the flame of hatred that his accession in 1419 aroused in Bohemia, 
and which lasted during the seventeen years of what are usually 
called the Hussite Wars. 

The Council of Constance had condemned heresy : it suc- 
ceeded in deposing three rival popes, and by its united choice 
of a new pope, Martin V, it put an end to the long schism that had 
divided the Church. The question of reform, the most vital 
of all the problems discussed, resulted in such controversy that 
men grew weary, and it was postponed for settlement to another 
council that the new pope pledged himself to call in five years. 

Such were the practical results of the first real attempt of 
the Church to solve the problems of mediaeval times, not by 
the decision of one man, whether pope or emperor, but by the 
voice of Christendom at large. If the attempt failed the diffi- 
culties in the way were so great that failure was inevitable. 

The Conciliar Movement was modern in the sense that it was 
an appeal to the judgement of the many rather than of a single 
autocrat; but it proved too mediaeval in actual construction 
and working for the growing spirit of nationality that brought 
its prejudices and misunderstandings to the council hall. 
English and French, Germans and Bohemians, Italians and 
men from beyond the Alps, were too mutually suspicious, too 
assured of the righteousness of their own outlook, to be able 
to sacrifice their individual, or still more their national, 
convictions to traditional authority. The day for world-rule, 
as mediaeval statesmen understood the term, had passed ; and 
the Council of Constance was a witness to its passing. 

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 
1265-1321 



Dante Alighieri . . 
King Robert of Naples 
Joanna I ,. , 

Ladislas ,, ,, 

Joanna II ,, ,, 



1309-43 
I343- 82 
1386 -14 14 

1414-35 



St. Catherine of Siena . . 1347-80 

Pope Gregory XI 137 1-8 

,, Urban VI ... . 1378-89 

,, Clement VII . . . 1378-94 

Pope Martin V . . . . 1417-31 



XXII 

PART I. THE FALL OF THE GREEK EMPIRE 

The final failure of Christendom to preserve Eastern Europe 
from the infidel may be traced back to the disastrous Fourth 
Crusade 1 in the thirteenth century, when Venice, for purely 
selfish reasons, drove out the Greek rulers of Constantinople, 
and helped to establish a Latin or Frankish Empire. This 
Empire lasted for fifty-seven years, weak in its foundation, and 
growing ever weaker like a badly built house, ready to tumble to 
the ground at the first tempest. It pretended to embrace all the 
territory that had belonged to its predecessors, but many of the 
feudal landowners whom it appointed were never able to take 
possession of their estates that remained under independent 
Greek or Bulgarian princes, while in Asia Minor the exiled 
Greek emperors ruled at Nicea, awaiting an opportunity to cross 
the Bosporus and effect a triumphant return. 

Michael Paleologus, to whom the opportunity came, was an 
unscrupulous adventurer who, on account of his military reputa- 
tion, had been appointed guardian of the young Emperor of 
Nicea, John Ducas, a boy of eight. Taking advantage of this 
position, Michael drove from the court all whom he knew to be 
disinterested partisans of his charge, and then declared himself 
joint emperor with the child. This ambitious claim was but a 
step to worse deeds, for before he was ten years old the unhappy 
little Emperor had been blinded and thrust into a dungeon by 
his co-emperor's orders, and the Paleologi had become the 
reigning house of the Eastern Empire. 

This was an evil day for Christendom, for though Michael 
Paleologus beat down the resistance of all the Greek princes who 
dared to resent the way in which he had usurped the throne, and 
afterwards succeeded in entering Constantinople, yet neither he 

* See p. 184. 



328 The Fall of the Greek Empire 

nor his descendants were the type of men to preserve what he 
had gained. Nearly all the Paleologi were weak and false : 
Michael himself so shifty in his dealings that his friends trusted 
him less than his enemies. Because he had won his throne by 
fraud and cruelty he was always suspicious, like Italian despots, 
lest one of his generals should turn against him and outwit him. 




€lu KEA"R EAST 

in the 

'MIDDLjE ACES 



Instead, therefore, of keeping his attention fixed on the steadily 
increasing power of the Mahometans, an inspection that would 
have warned a wise man to maintain a strong army along the 
borders of the Empire in Asia Minor, he was so afraid of his 
own Greek troops that, once established in Constantinople, 
he disbanded whole regiments, and exiled their best officers. 
Everything he did, in fact, was calculated merely to secure his 
immediate safety or advantage, with no thought for the future, so 
that he died leaving his kingdom an easy prey to foreign enemies 
strong enough to seize the" advantage. 



The Eastern Empire 329 

Besides the misrule of Michael Paleologus, other factors were 
at work, busily undermining the restored Greek Empire. For 
one thing, the Greek and Bulgarian princes, who had obtained 
independence when the Latins ruled in Constantinople, had no 
intention of returning to their old allegiance ; while here and 
there were feudal states, like the Duchy of Athens, established 
by the Latins and still held by them, although the Frankish 
Emperor who had been their suzerain had disappeared. The 
islands in the Aegean Sea were most of them in Venetian hands, 
and Venice took care that the Greek Empire, whose fleet she 
had swept from the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century, 
should not construct another sufficiently strong to win back these 
commercial and naval bases. In the same way the trade that had 
passed from Constantinople never returned : for the cities of the 
Mediterranean preferred to deal on their own account with 
Syrian and Egyptian merchants rather than to pay toll to 
a ' middleman ' in the markets of the Paleologi. 

For all these reasons it can be easily seen that the new 
Byzantine Empire was in a far worse state of weakness and 
instability than the old. Like Philip IV of France, who found 
the financial methods of Charlemagne quite inadequate for 
dealing with his more modern needs and expenses, the Paleologi 
were confronted by a system of administering laws and exacting 
taxes that, having completely broken down under the strain of 
foreign invasion, was even more incapable of meeting fourteenth- 
century problems with any feasible solution. More practical 
rulers might have invented new methods, but the only hope of 
the upstart line that had usurped power without realizing the 
responsibility such power entailed was to seek the military and 
financial aid of the West as in the days of Alexius Commenus. 

Little such aid was there to gain. Venice and Genoa, once 
eager crusaders, were now too busy contesting the supremacy of 
the Mediterranean to act together as allies in Eastern waters. 
The Popes, annoyed that the overthrow of the Latin Empire had 
brought about the restoration of the Greek Church, were willing 
enough to consider the reconversion of Byzantium held out to 
them as a bait ; but even if they granted their sympathy they had 



330 The Fall of the Greek Empire 

obviously too many political troubles of their own to make lavish 
promises likely of fulfilment. Western Europe, in fact, was too 
interested in its own national struggles to answer calls to 
a crusade, too blind in its narrow self-interest and prejudice 
against the Greeks to realize what danger the ruin of Constanti- 
nople must bring on those who had for centuries used her as 
a bulwark. 

Andronicus II, the son and successor of Michael, was equally 
cruel and false, and still more of a personal coward. He saw 
the danger of Mahometan invasion that his father had ignored, 
and, in terror both of the Turks and of his own subjects, arranged 
to hire a band of Catalan mercenaries who had been fighting for 
the Aragonese against the Angevins in Sicily, in the war intro- 
duced by the Sicilian Vespers. 1 This war over, the captain ot 
the Catalans, Roger de Flor, a Templar who had been expelled 
from his Order for his wild deeds, was quite willing to unsheathe 
his sword on a new field of glory and pillage ; so that on 
receiving dazzling promises of reward and friendship he and his 
'merry men ' sailed for the East. 

Once established in Greece, however, the Catalans proved so 
arrogant and lawless that the Greeks complained that they were a 
far worse infliction than the Mahometans. Quarrels ensued, and 
finally, in the course of a bitter dispute between Roger de Flor 
and Andronicus, the Spanish general was murdered as he stood 
talking to his master. This act of treachery, added to growing 
indignation at the limited supplies of money the Emperor had 
grudgingly disbursed for his foreign army, turned the Catalans 
from pretence allies into a horde of raging enemies. From the 
walls of Constantinople itself they were driven back, but elsewhere 
they burned and slew and laid waste the country, until at last, 
reaching Athens, they stormed the walls of that city, killed 
its Latin Duke, and established themselves as an independent 
republic. 

By the time they had ceased to rove the Catalans had also 
ceased to be dangerous, but in their savage wanderings they had 
inflicted incalculable harm upon the Byzantine Empire. The 

1 See p. 229. 



Turkish Invasion of Europe 331 

Andronicus who could barely hold them at bay before the gates 
of his capital was an Andronicus who could not hope to withstand 
invasion in Asia Minor; and over his Eastern boundaries, 
left weakly garrisoned since the days of Michael Paleologus, 
poured the Turks in irresistible numbers. Soon there remained 
to the Greek Empire, of all their provinces across the Bosporus, 
merely a strip of coast-line to the north of the Dardanelles, and 
finally this also was whittled away, and the Turks crossed 
the Straits and captured Gallipoli as a base for future operations 
in Europe. 

The chief Mahometan Emir during this period of conquest 
was a certain Orkhan, the son of Othman, whose name in 
the form ' Ottoman ' is still borne by his branch of the Turkish 
race. This Orkhan was quite as cruel and unscrupulous as the 
Paleologi, but far more statesmanlike ; for as he conquered the 
territory of Greek Emperors and rival Emirs in Asia Minor he 
consolidated his rule over them by a just and careful government 
that gradually welded them into a compact state. 

When a civil war broke out between John V, the grandson of 
Andronicus II, and his guardian and co-ruler, a wily schemer of 
the Michael Paleologus type called John Cantacuzenus, the 
latter, with utter lack of patriotism, appealed to Orkhan for aid. 
He even offered him his daughter in marriage, an alliance 
to which the Turk eagerly agreed, dispatching a large force of 
auxiliaries to Thrace as token of his friendly intentions towards 
his future father-in-law. These troops he determined should 
remain, and difficult indeed the Christians found it to dislodge 
them in later years, for the Turkish legions had been stiffened 
by a device of Orkhan which has done more to keep his name in 
men's minds perhaps than any of his victories. 

It was the Emir's custom on a march of conquest not to 
oppress the conquered, but to exact from them a tribute both in 
money and in child life. From every village that passed under 
the rule of Orkhan his soldiers carried away from their homes a 
fixed number of young boys, chosen because of their health and 
sturdy, well-developed limbs. These children were placed 
in barracks, where they were educated without any knowledge 



332 The Fall of the Greek Empire 

of their former life to become soldiers of the Prophet — fanatical, 
highly disciplined, skilled with the bow and sabre, inculcated 
with but one ideal and ambition — to excel in statecraft or on the 
battle-field. 

Because of their excessive loyalty emirs would choose from 
among the ranks of these ' tribute children ' their viziers and 
other chief officials, while the majority would enter the infantry 
corps of 'Janissaries ', or ' new soldiers ', whose ferocity and en- 
durance in attacking or holding apparently impossible positions 
became the terror of Europe. In the words of a modern historian, 
' With diabolical ingenuity the Turks secured the victory of the 
Crescent by the Children of the Cross, and trained up Christian 
boys to destroy the independence and authority of their country 
and their Church.' 

In 1361, some years after Orkhan's death, the Turks captured 
Adrianople, and thus came into contact with other Christian 
nations besides the Greeks, namely, the Serbians and Hungarians. 

The Serbians were the principal Slav race in the Balkans, and 
under their great ruler Stephen Dushan it had seemed likely 
that they might become the predominant power in Eastern 
Europe. The Kings of Bulgaria and Bosnia were their vassals; 
they had made conquests both in Albania and Greece, thus 
opening up a way to the Adriatic and Aegean Seas. It would 
have been well for Christendom if this energetic race of fighters 
could have subdued the feeble Greeks, and so presented to the 
Turks, when they crossed the Bosporus, a foe worthy to 
match the Janissaries in stubborn courage. Unfortunately 
Stephen Dushan died before the years of Turkish invasion, 
leaving his throne to a young son, ' a youth of great parts,' as a 
Serbian chronicler describes him, ' quiet and gracious, but with- 
out experience.' 

Only experience or an iron will could have held together in 
those rough times a kingdom relying for its protection on the 
swords of a quarrelsome nobility ; and Serbia broke up into 
a number of small principalities, her disintegration assisted by 
the ambitious jealousy of Louis the Great of Hungary, who lost 
no opportunity of dismembering and weakening this sister king- 



Battle of Kossovo 333 

dom that might otherwise prove a hindrance to his own imperial 
projects. 

With the career of Louis we have dealt in other chapters, and 
have seen him humbling the Venetians, driving Joanna I out of 
Naples, acquiring the throne of Poland, fighting against the 
Turks and the Emperor Charles IV. Because he spent his 
energy recklessly on all these projects, Louis remains for 
posterity, apart from the civilizing influence of his court life, 
one of the arch-destroyers of the Middle Ages, the sovereign 
who more than any other exposed Eastern Europe to Mahometan 
conquest. Had he either refrained from his constant policy of 
aggression towards Serbia, thus allowing her to unite her subject 
princes in the face of the invading Turks, or had he even been 
powerful enough to found an Empire of Hungary that would 
absorb both Serbia and Constantinople and act as a bulwark in 
the East, mediaeval history would have closed on a different 
scene. Instead, the famous victories of Louis over the Turks, 
that made his name honoured by Christendom, were rendered 
of no avail by other partial victories over Christian nations who 
should have been his allies. 

On the field of Kossovo, in 1389, the Serbians, shorn of half 
their provinces and weakened and betrayed by the Hungarians, 
met the Turks in battle. Both sides have left record of the 
ferocity of the struggle. ' The angels in Heaven ', said the 
Turks, ' amazed by the hideous noise, forgot the heavenly hymns 
with which they always glorify God.' ' The battlefield became 
like a tulip-bed with its ruddy severed heads and rolling turbans.' 
' Few', wrote the Serbian chronicler, 'returned to their own 
country.' 

When the day closed, both the Serbian king, Lazar, and the 
Turkish sultan lay dead amid their warriors, and the victory, as 
far as the actual fighting was concerned, seemed to rest neither 
with Christian nor Moslem. Yet, in truth, the Turk could supply 
other armies, as numerous and as well-equipped, to take the place 
of those who had fallen, while the Serbians had exhausted their 
uttermost effort : thus the fruits of the battle fell entirely into the 
hands of the infidel. 



334 The Fall of the Greek Empire 

' Things are hard for us, hard since Kossovo,' is a modern 
Serbian saying, for the Serbs have never forgotten the day when 
they fought their last despairing battle as champions of the Cross, 
and lost for a time their ambition of dominating Eastern Europe. 

There resteth to Serbia a glory, (runs the old ballad) 

Yea ! As long as a babe shall be born, 
Or there resteth a man in the land — 
So long as a blade of corn 
Shall be reaped by a human hand, 
So long as the grass shall grow 
On the mighty plain of Kossovo — 
So long, so long, even so 
Shall the glory of those remain 
Who this day in battle were slain. 

From the day of Kossovo the ultimate conquest of Eastern 
Europe by the Turks became a certainty. Lack of ambition on 
the part of some of the sultans and a life and death struggle in 
which others found themselves involved in Asia Minor against 
Tartar tribes merely deferred the time of reckoning, but it came 
at last in the middle of the fifteenth century, when Mohammed 
II, 'the Conqueror', determined to reign in Constantinople. 

This Mohammed, famous in mediaeval history, was the son of 
a Serbian princess, and he is said to have grown up indifferent 
alike to Christianity or Islam. He is described as having 'a pair 
of red and white cheeks full and round, a hooked nose, and 
a resolute mouth ', while flatterers went still farther and declared 
that his moustache was ' like leaves over two rosebuds, and every 
hair of his beard a thread of gold '. In character, from a fierce, 
undisciplined boy he grew into a self-willed man, intent upon the 
satisfaction of his ambitions and desires. He could speak, or at 
least understand, Arabic, Greek, Persian, Hebrew, and Latin ; 
and chroniclers record that it was in reading the triumphs ot 
Alexander and Julius Caesar that he was first inspired with the 
thought of becoming a great general. 

His rival, Constantine XI, the last and best ol the Paleologi, 
was a man of very different type from the Turk, or indeed from 
his own ancestors. He was devoted to the Christian religion 



Fall of Constantinople 335 

and Greece — brave, simple, and generous. When he first 
became aware of Mohammed's aggressive hostility he attempted 
to disarm it by liberating Turkish prisoners. ' If it shall please 
God to soften your heart ', he sent word, ' I shall rejoice ; but 
however that may be, I shall live and die in the defence of my 
people and of my Faith.' His words were put to the test when, 
in the autumn of 1452, the siege of Constantinople began. 

The Emperor looked despairingly for Western aid, in order to 
secure which the Emperor John V had himself in years gone by 
visited Rome and made formal renunciation to the Pope of all 
the views of the Greek Church that disagreed with Catholic 
doctrine. One of the chief points of controversy had been the 
Catholic use of unleavened bread in the Sacrament of the Mass; 
another, the words of the Nicene Creed, declaring that the Holy 
Ghost ' proceeded ' from the Son as well as from the Father. 

In all matters of faith as well as of ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
John V, and later Constantine himself, had made open acknow- 
ledgement of the supremacy of Rome, but their compliance did 
not avail to save their kingdom in the hour of danger : indeed, 
while it evoked little military support from Catholic nations it 
aroused keen hostility and treachery at home. There were many 
Greeks who refused to endorse their sovereign's signature to 
what they considered an act of national betrayal, some declaring 
openly that the Mahometan victories were God's punishment on 
kings who had forsaken the faith of their fathers, and that it would 
be better to see the turbans of the infidels in St. Sophia than 
a cardinal's red hat. 

When, then, Mohammed began to thunder with his fourteen 
batteries against the once impregnable walls of Constantinople, 
making enormous breaches, the reduction of the city had become 
only a question of days. It is said that the Sultan in his eager- 
ness to take possession offered the Emperor and his army 
freedom and religious toleration if they would capitulate. ' I 
desire either my throne or a grave,' replied Constantine, knowing 
well which of the two must be his fate. 

Beside some four thousand of his own subjects he could com- 
mand only a few hundred mercenaries sent by the Pope, and three 



336 The Fall of the Greek Empire 

hundred Genoese. Of the Venetians and other Western Euro- 
peans there were even less ; and it was with this miniature army 
that he manned the wide circuit of the walls, led out sorties, and 
rebuilt as well as he could the gaps made by the heavy guns. 

The contest was absurdly unequal, for Mohammed had some 
two hundred and fifty-eight thousand men ; and in May 1453 
the inevitable end came to a heroic struggle. Up through the 
breaches in the wall, that no labour was left to repair, climbed 
wave after wave of fanatical Janissaries, shouting their hopes of 
victory and Paradise. Beneath their continuous onslaughts the 
defenders weakened and broke, fighting to the last amid the nar- 
row streets, until Constantine himself was slain, his body only 
recognized later by the golden eagles embroidered on his shoes. 

The women, and many of the Greeks who had refused to help 
in this time of crisis because of the Emperor's submission to the 
Catholic Church, were torn from their sanctuary in St. Sophia 
and sold as slaves in the markets of Syria. 

Thus was lost the second city of Christendom to the infidels, 
and the old Roman Empire, whose restoration had been a 
mediaeval idea for centuries, perished for ever. 

Retribution, at least according to human ideas of justice, 
often seems to lag in history ; but in the case of the fall of Con- 
stantinople some of the culprits most responsible, on account of 
their selfish indifference, were speedily called on to pay the 
penalty. Mohammed II, his ambition inflated by what he had 
already achieved, planned the reduction of Christendom, de- 
claring that he would feed his horse from the altar of St. Peter's 
in Rome. With an enormous army he advanced through Serbia 
and besieged Belgrade ; but here he was thrust back by a 
Christian champion, John Hunyadi, 'the wicked one', as the 
title reads in Turkish, with such loss of men and material ' that 
Hungary and eastern Germany were saved from serious danger 
for eighty years '. 

With the Balkan states it was otherwise, whose governments, 
divided in their counsels, jealous in their rivalries, had been 
incapable of the union that could alone have saved them, and 



Marco Polo 337 

one by one they were crushed beneath ' the Conqueror's ' heel- 
Greece also came under Moslem domination, and finally the 
islands of the Aegean Sea that Venice had torn from Constanti- 
nople in the interests of her trade were wrested away from her, 
leaving her faced with the prospect of commercial ruin. 

PART II. VOYAGE AND DISCOVERY 

All through the Middle Ages it had been to the cities of the 
Mediterranean, first of all to Amalfi and Pisa, then to Marseilles, 
Barcelona, Genoa, and Venice, that Europe had turned as her 
obvious medium of communication with the East and all its fabu- 
lous wonders. In the thirteenth century a Venetian merchant, 
Marco Polo, setting forth with his father and uncle, had visited 
the kingdom of Cathay, or China, and brought back twenty years 
later not only marvellous tales of the court of Khubla Khan in 
Pekin, but also precious stones, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and 
emeralds in such abundance that he was soon nicknamed by his 
fellow citizens 'Marco of the Millions'. 

Into the delighted ears of the guests he invited to a banquet 
on his return he poured descriptions of a land where 'merchants 
are so numerous and so rich that their wealth can neither be told 
nor believed. They and their ladies do nothing with their own 
hands, but live as delicately as if they were kings.' What 
seems to have struck his mediaeval mind with most astonish- 
ment were the enormous public baths in the ' City of Heaven ' 
in southern China, of which there were four thousand, 'the 
largest and most beautiful baths in the world.' 

The banquets also given by the great Khan excelled any 
European feasts. They were attended by many thousands of 
guests, and their host, raised on a dais, had as his servants the 
chief nobles, who would wind rich towels round their mouths 
that they might not breathe upon the royal plates. For presents 
the Khan was accustomed to receive at a time some five thousand 
camels, or an equal number of elephants, draped in silken cloths 
worked with silver and gold. His government surpassed in its 
organization anything Europe had imagined since the fall of the 



33 8 Voyage and Discovery 

Roman Empire, such, for instance, as the postal system, by 
means of messengers on foot and horse, that linked up Pekin 
with lands a hundred days distant, or the beneficent regard of 
a ruler who in times of bad harvests not only remitted taxation 
but dispatched grain to the principal districts that had suffered. 

Coal was used in China freely, 'a kind of black stone cut from 
the mountains in veins,' as Marco Polo describes it. 'It maintains 
the fire ', he added, ' better than wood, and throughout the 
whole of Cathay this fuel is used.' 

Besides dilating on the wealth and prosperity of China, the 
Venetian had also much to say of Zipangu, or Japan, of Tibet 
and Bengal, of Ceylon, ' the finest island in the world/ and of 
Java, supposed then to be ' above three thousand miles wide \ 

Other travellers were to confirm many of his statements, but 
none told their tale so simply and realistically as Polo, while not 
a few, like the English Sir John Mandeville in the fourteenth 
century, supplied fiction in large doses where it seemed to them 
that truth might bore their readers. The eagerness with which 
either fact or fiction was swallowed bears witness, at any rate, first 
to the extraordinary fascination excited in mediaeval minds by 
such names as 'Cathay' or 'Zipangu ' ; and next to the general 
Western belief in the inexhaustible riches of the East and their 
determination to secure at least a portion. 

When the Seljuk Turks, with their fierce animosity towards 
Christendom, had settled like a curtain between East and West, 
the dangers and expense of trading and commerce with Arabia 
and Asia Minor of course increased. Venice and Genoa still 
brought back shiploads of silks, spices, and perfumes for Western 
markets, but the price of these goods was increased by the tolls 
paid to Turkish sultans and emirs for leave to transfer merchan- 
dise from camels to trading-sloops. Then came the fall of Con- 
stantinople, when Venice, by a treaty with ' the Conqueror ' in 
the following year, appeared to secure wonderful trading 
privileges. Mohammed, however, made such promises only to 
break them when convenient, and, so soon as he could afford to do 
so, because he was securely established in Europe, the tolls he 
demanded became heavier, not lighter, the restrictions he placed 



Henry < the Navigator' 339 

upon trade more and more galling to Christian merchants, until 
the usual purchasers of Venetian goods grew exasperated at 
prices that doubled and trebled continually. 

There were but two methods of avoiding this ever-increasing 
policy of exploitation apart from doing without such luxuries : 
either a complete conquest of the Turks, that would compel 
them to open up afresh the old caravan routes to the East ; or 
else the discovery of a new route that would avoid their dominions 
altogether. Largely through the blind selfishness of Mediter- 
ranean cities, and especially of Venice, we have seen that the 
golden opportunity of aiding the Byzantine Empire had been 
lost for ever. Thus the first method failed. It remains to deal 
with the second, the voyages of discovery with which the Middle 
Ages fittingly close. 

Towards the end of the fourteenth century there was born in 
Portugal a prince, Henry, third son of King John I, and grand- 
son by an English mother of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. 
While he was still a boy this prince earned fame for his share in 
the capture of Ceuta, a Moorish town exactly opposite Gibraltar 
on the North African coast. To the ordinary Portuguese mind 
this conquest raised hopes of a gradual absorption of the southern 
Mediterranean seaboard, possibly of competition in the Levant 
with Genoa and Venice ; but Prince Henry saw farther than 
ordinary minds. The problem that he set himself and any one, 
Arab or European, who seemed likely to supply a solution was 
— What would happen if, instead of entering the Mediterranean, 
Portuguese ships were to sail due south ? How big was this 
unknown stretch of land called Africa, in the maps of which 
geographers hid their ignorance by placing labels, such as ' Here 
are hippografs ! Here are two-headed monsters ! ' ? Would it 
not be possible to reach the far-famed wonders of Cathay by 
sailing first south and then east round Africa, thus avoiding trade 
routes through Syria and southern Russia ? 

It was fortunate that Prince Henry was a mathematician and 
geographer himself, for many people told him in answer to his 
inquiries that Africa ended at Cape Nam, not so many miles 
south of Tangier, and others that the white man who dared to 

z 2 



34-o Voyage and Discovery 

sail beyond a certain point would be turned black by the heat of 
the sun, while the waters boiled about his vessel and the winds 
blew sheets of flame across the horizon. 

Prince Henry refused to believe such tales. He could not 
sail himself, because he was so often occupied with wars in Africa 
against the Moors ; but year after year he fitted out ships at his 
own expense, and chose the most daring mariners whom he could 
find, bribing them with promises of reward and fame to navigate 
the unknown African coast. He himself built a naval arsenal at 
Sagres on a southern promontory of Portugal, and here, when 
not busy with affairs of state, he would study the heavens, make 
charts, and watch anxiously for the returning sails of his brave 
adventurers. 

During Prince Henry's lifetime Portuguese or Italians in his 
pay discovered not only Madeira, or 'the island of wood', as 
they christened it from its many forests, but the Canaries, Cape 
Verde Islands, and the African coast as far south as Gambia and 
Sierra Leone. Soon there was no longer any need to bribe 
mariners into taking risks, for those who first led the way on 
these adventurous voyages brought back with them negroes and 
gold dust as evidence that they had been to lands where men 
could live, and where there were possibilities of untold wealth. 
Thus the work of exploration continued joyfully. 

It was in 1471, some years after the death of Prince Henry, 
that Portuguese navigators crossed the Equator without being 
broiled black by the sun or raising sheets of flame, as the super- 
stitious had predicted. The next important step on this new 
road to Asia was the voyage of Bartholomew Diaz, who, sailing 
ever southwards, swept in an icy wind without knowing it round 
the Cape, past Table Mountain, and then, turning eastwards, 
landed at last on the little island of Santa Cruz in Algoa Bay, 
where he planted a cross. He would have explored the main- 
land also, but Kaffirs armed with heavy stones collected and 
drove back the landing-party. 

Diaz, emboldened by his success, wished to sail farther, but 
his crew were weary of adventure, and with tears of regret in his 
eyes he was forced to yield to their threats of mutiny and turn 



Vasco da Gama 341 

homewards. At Lisbon, describing his voyage, he said that on 
account of its dangers he had called the southernmost point of 
Africa the ' Cape of Storms ', but the King of Portugal, hearing 
that this was indeed the limit of the continent, and that in all 
probability the way to Asia lay beyond, would not consent to 
such an ill-omened name. ' It shall be the Cape of Good Hope,' 
he declared, and so it has remained. 

In 1498 the work of exploration begun by Diaz was completed 
by another famous navigator, Vasco da Gama. National hopes 
of wealth and glory were centred in his task, and when he and 
his company marched forth to their ships a large crowd went with 
them to the shore, carrying candles, and singing a solemn litany. 
Then the sails of his four vessels dipped below the horizon and 
were not seen for two years and eight months, but when at last 
men and women had begun to despair at the great silence, their 
hero reappeared amongst them, bringing news more wonderful 
and glorious than anything that Portugal had dared to hope. 

There is little space to tell in this chapter the adventures that 
Vasco da Gama related to the King and his court. He and his 
crews, it seemed, had sailed for weeks amid ' a lonely dreary 
waste of seas and boundless sky': they had skirmished with 
Hottentots and 'doubled the Cape', caught in such a whirl of 
breakers and stormy winds that the walls of the wooden ships 
had oozed water, and despair and sickness had seized upon all. 
Vasco da Gama, even when ill and depressed, was not to be turned 
from his purpose. Eastwards and northwards he set his sails, 
in the teeth of laments and threats from his sailors, and so on 
Christmas Day landed on a part of the coast to which in memory 
of the most famous Dies Natalis he gave the name of Natal. 

From Natal, battling the dread disease of scurvy brought on 
by a prolonged diet of salt meat, the Portuguese commander 
pursued his way, attacked, as often as he landed for water and 
fresh food, by fierce Mahometan tribes, until at last, guided 
by an Arabian pilot whom he had picked up, he came to the 
harbours of Calicut in India, where was a Christian king. The 
new route to Asia had been discovered. ' A lucky venture — 
plenty of emeralds. . . . You owe great thanks to God for having 



342 Voyage and Discovery 

brought you to a country holding such riches,' declared the 
natives, and loud was the rejoicing of the Portuguese at this 
glorious national prospect. 

The likely effects of Vasco da Gama's voyage did not pass un- 
noticed elsewhere in Europe. ' Soon,' exclaimed a Venetian 
merchant in deep gloom, ' it will be cheaper to buy goods in 
Lisbon than in Venice.' ' The death-knell of the great Republic's 
commercial prosperity sounded in these words. 

In the meanwhile, some years before Vasco da Gama's 
triumphant achievement, a still greater discovery was made that 
was destined in the course of time to change the whole com- 
mercial aspect of the world. Its author was a Genoese sailor, 
Christopher Columbus, who, tradition says, once sailed as far 
north as Iceland, and in the south to the island of Porto Santo. 
Always in his spare time he could be found bent over maps and 
charts, calculating, weaving around his reasoned mathematical 
arguments the tales of shipwrecked mariners, until at last he 
brought to the ears of his astonished fellow men and women a 
scheme for finding Cathay, neither by sailing south nor east, but 
due west across the Atlantic. 

Here is a fourteenth-century description of the Atlantic, 
a dismal picture still popularly accepted in the fifteenth : ' A 
vast and boundless ocean on which ships dared not venture out of 
sight of land. For even if sailors knew the directions of the 
winds they would not know whither those winds would carry 
them ; and, as there is no inhabited country beyond, they would 
run great risks of being lost in the mist and vapour. The limit 
of the west is the Atlantic Ocean.' 

Many people still believed that the world was flat, and that to 
sail across the Atlantic was to incur the risk of being driven by 
the winds over the edge into space. Thus Columbus met with 
either reproof for contemplating such risks, or ridicule for his 
folly, but so convinced was he of his own wisdom that he only 
grew the more enthusiastic as a result of opposition. 

Without money or royal patronage he could not hope to make 
the voyage a success, and so he laid his scheme before the King 
of Portugal, usually a willing patron of adventure. Unfortu- 



Christopher Columbus 343 

nately for Columbus, the discoveries along the African coast 
promised such wealth and trade to Portugal that her ruler did 
not feel inclined to take risks in other directions that, while they 
must involve expense, as yet held no guarantee of repayment. 

' I went to take refuge in Portugal,' wrote Columbus at a later 
date, 'since the King of that country was more versed in dis- 
covery than an}' other, but ... in fourteen years I could not make 
him understand what I said.' Driven at last from Portugal by 
a decided refusal, Christopher went to Spain, sending his 
brother Bartholomew with a letter explaining his project to 
King Henry VII of England. It is interesting to note that the 
keen-witted Tudor, as soon as the scheme was laid before him, is 
said to have expressed his readiness to learn more and to lend 
his support ; but Bartholomew had been shipwrecked on his 
voyage northwards, and owing to this delay Columbus had 
already received the patronage of Spain and set out on his 
voyage before his brother returned with the news. 

It was Queen Isabel of Castile, wife of King Ferdinand of 
Aragon, 1 who after considerable hesitation, and against the 
advice of a council of leading bishops and statesmen, determined 
finally to pledge her sympathy, and tradition says her jewels if 
necessary, in the mariner's cause. Part of the attraction of his pro- 
ject lay in its appeal to her Castilian imagination, for Castile had 
been ever haunted by the possibilities of the bleak grey ocean that 
rolled at the gates of Galicia; but still more potent than the thought 
of discovery was the desire of spreading the Catholic Faith. 
This hope also inspired Columbus, who regarded his enterprise 
as in the nature of a crusade, believing that he had been called to 
preach the Gospel to the millions of heathen inhabiting Cathay. 

When Columbus set forth on his first voyage to 'the Indies', 
as he roughly called the unknown territory he sought, those who 
sailed in his three ships were many of them ' pressed ' men, that 
is, sailors ordered on board by their town, that having incurred 
royal displeasure was given this way of appeasing it. Thus they 
were without enthusiasm or any belief in what they thought their 
admiral's mad and dangerous adventure, and from the time that 

1 See p. 274. 



344 Voyage and Discovery 

they lost sight of land they never ceased to grumble and utter 
threats of mutiny. At one time it was the extraordinary 
variations in the compass that brought them trembling to com- 
plain ; at another the steadiness of the wind blowing from the 
East that they believed would never change and allow them to 
return home ; finally it was the sluggish waters of the Sargassa 
Sea, amid whose weeds they saw themselves destined to drift 
until they died of starvation and thirst. To every suggestion of 
setting the sails eastward Columbus turned a deaf ear : but for " 
the rest he threatened, cajoled, or argued, as the occasion seemed 
to demand, his own heart sinking each time the cry of ' Land ! ' 
was raised and the ardently desired vision proved only -to be 
some bank of clouds lying low upon the horizon. 

At length came the news that a moving light had been seen in 
the darkness. ' It appeared like a candle that went up and 
down/ says Columbus in his diary, and all waited eagerly for 
dawn that revealed at last a wooded island, later called the 
Bahamas, but then believed to be part of the mainland of Asia. 
Clad in armour, and carrying the royal banner of Spain, the 
great discoverer of the West stepped ashore, and there, 
humbly kneeling, he and his crews raised to Heaven a Te Deum 
of thankfulness and joy. 

Columbus made five voyages to the West in all, for the way 
once shown proved easy enough, nor did he need to ' press ' 
crews for the enterprise, but rather to guard against unwelcome 
stowaways. The brown-skinned Indians, gaily coloured parrots, 
gold nuggets, and strange roots that he brought back as witness 
of his first success were enough to inflame the minds and 
ambitions of Spaniards with such high hopes of wealth and glory 
that they almost fought to be allowed to join the expeditions. 

Vasco da Gama was rewarded for his voyage to India with 
a large pension and the Portuguese title of ' Dom ' : he died 
in honoured old age. It is sad to find that after the first 
triumphant return, when no glory and praise seemed too great 
to bestow on their hero, the Spaniards turned against Columbus. 
They blamed him because gold was not more abundant ; because 
his settlers quarrelled and started feuds with the natives ; because, 



Christopher Columbus 345 

although a very great mariner, he did not prove a ' governor ' able 
to control and manage other men easily. Not a few were jealous 
of his genius, and determined to bring about his ruin out of spite. 

From his third voyage to the West Columbus was sent back 
by his enemies in chains, ill with wounded pride at his shameful 
treatment. Queen Isabel, hearing of it, instantly ordered his 
release, and tried to soothe his indignation ; but not long 
afterwards she herself died, and Ferdinand, left to himself, 
was wholly intent on Aragonese ambitions in the Mediter- 
ranean. To him the conquest of Naples was far more important 
than any discovery of Cathay, and so Columbus's complaints 
went unheeded and he died in poverty forgotten by all save a 
few. ' After twenty years of toil and peril,' he exclaimed bitterly, 
as he was borne ashore from his last voyage, ' I do not own even 
a roof in Spain.' 

The New World to which he had won an entrance was given 
the name of another, namely, of a Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, 
who, sailing beyond the West Indies, reached the mainland. 

The effect of Columbus's discovery upon the life of Europe was 
momentous. No longer the Atlantic lay like a grey wall between 
man and the Unknown. It had become a highway, not to Cathay 
but to a greater West, where were riches beyond all human dream- 
ing, ready as a harvest for the enterprising and hardworking. 

The central road of mediaeval commerce had been the 
Mediterranean, the highway of the modern world was to be the 
Atlantic, and the commercial future of Europe lay not with the 
city republics of the South but with the nations of the North 
and West, with Portugal and Spain, with Flanders and England, 
that had lain upon the fringe of the Old World but stood at the 
very heart of the New. 

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 

Emperor Andronicus II . 1282-1328 j Stephen Dushan .... 1331-55 

,, John V . . . . 1341-91 Marco Polo 1254-T324 

Sultan Orkhan .... 1325-59 Henry ' the Navigator ' . 1394-1460 

„ Mohammed II . . 1451-81 i Cape of Good Hope rounded i486 



XXIII 

THE RENAISSANCE 

All history is the record of change, either in the direction 
of social progress or decay; but so gradual is this movement 
that, like the transition from night to dawn or noon to 
evening, it is beyond our vision to state the moment when 
tendencies began or ceased. It is only possible to note the 
definite changes in their achievement, and then to disentangle 
the threads by turning back along the twisted chain into which 
they have been woven. 

Sometimes in history there have been so many changes within 
a short time that the effect has been cumulative and an epoch 
has been created, as at the break-up of the Roman Empire, when 
civilization was merged in the ' Dark Ages '. Again, it is true 
of Europe at the end of the fifteenth century and during the 
greater part of the sixteenth, a period usually called ' the Renais- 
sance ', or time of New Birth ', because then it became apparent 
that the old mediaeval outlook and ways of life had vanished, 
while others much more familiar and easy to understand had 
taken their place : the Modern World had been called into being. 

The most obvious change to be found at the Renaissance was 
the collapse of the mediaeval ideal of a world-empire ruled in the 
name of God by Pope and Emperor. The Western Empire 
still remained pretentious in its claims ; but its wiser rulers, such 
as Rudolph I and Charles IV, had already realized that success 
lay rather in German kingship than in imperial influence. The 
Popes had been restored to Rome, but the threat of councils 
that could depose and reform hung like a cloud over their 
insistence on the absolute obedience of Christendom ; and, 
recognizing the inevitable, the Vatican had sunk the ambitions 
of an Innocent III in those of a temporal Italian Prince. Search- 
ing along the chain of causes, it becomes clear enough that the 



The Renaissance 347 

trend of history during the later Middle Ages had been this 
development of the smaller unity of the nation out of the bigger 
unity of the world-state. By the end of the fifteenth century 
England, France, and Spain were already nations ; while even 
Germany and Italy, feeling the call in a lesser degree, had 
substituted for a wider sense of nationality devotion to a province 
or city state. 

The second of the great changes that characterize the Renais- 
sance was the development of the idea of man as an individual. 
All through the Middle Ages, except perhaps in the case of rulers, 
men and women counted in the life of the world around them, 
not so much as separate influences as a part of the system into 
which they were born or absorbed. In early days the tribe ac- 
cepted its members' acts, whether good or bad, as something that 
was the concern of all to be atoned for, supported, or avenged, 
as a public duty. Still more strongly was this attitude expressed 
in family affairs, as in the numerous ' vendettas ', or feuds like 
those of the Welfs and Waiblingen, or of 'the Blacks' and 
' Whites ' in Florence. 

Turning from racial ties to social, we find mediaeval associa- 
tions of all kinds holding a man bound, not by his own personal 
choice or discretion, but by the decision of the group to which 
he happened to be attached. The feudal system was never com- 
plete enough in practice to make a good example of this bondage, 
but in theory from the tenant-in-chief to the landowner lowest in 
the social scale there was a settled rule of life, dictating the 
duties and responsibilities of lord and vassal. Still more was 
this binding rule true of that greatest of all mediaeval corpora- 
tions — monasticism, that demanded from its sons and daughters 
absolute obedience in the annihilation of self. St. Bernard, 
whose personality was so strong that he could not remain hidden 
amongst the mass of his fellows, was yet, we remember, angry with 
Abelard for this above all other failings — that he had set up his 
individual judgement as a test of life. In Abelard, as in Arnold 
of Brescia, lay the first stirrings of the independent modern 
spirit that at the Renaissance was to shake the foundations ot 
the mediaeval world. 



348 The Renaissance 

Besides monasticism there were other associations — the uni- 
versities and [the class corporations, merchant guilds such as 
the North German Hansa, and smaller city guilds, such as the 
' Greater ' and ' Lesser Arts ' in Florence, comprising groups of 
lawyers, fishmongers, &c. All these last maintained a standard 
of uniformity, regulating not only hours of work, rate of pay, 
nature of employment, scale of contributions, like a modern 
trade union, but went much farther, interfering in the life of each 
individual member to insist on what he should wear in public and 
how he might spend the money he had earned. It was a spirit 
of benevolent slavery that held sway so long as the strivings of 
the individual mind were overborne by a sense of helplessness 
in the face of ignorance or by the weight of tradition. 

This weight of tradition leads naturally to the third great 
change heralded by the Renaissance — the breaking-up of a sky 
curtained in mental darkness into separate groups of clouds, 
still heavily charged with superstition and ignorance, but their 
density relieved by the light of a genuine inquiry after truth for 
its own sake. During the Middle Ages we have seen that men 
and women looked back for inspiration to the Roman Empire, 
and this made them distrust progress, just as a timid rider will 
dread a spirited horse because he fears to lose control and to be 
carried into unknown ways. 

The earliest guardian of mediaeval knowledge had been the 
Church, and in the light that she understood her task she 
faithfully taught the world about her. Her motto was ' Rever- 
ence for the Past ' ; but, bent in worship before the altar 
of tradition, she lost sight of that other great world-motto, 
'Trust the Future', which has been one of the guiding stars 
of modern times. Her interpretation of the Faith, of the 
legitimate bounds of knowledge, of the limits of Art, had been 
almost a necessary school of discipline for the early Middle Ages 
with their tendency to barbaric licence ; but as she civilized 
men's minds and their aptitude for reasoning and understanding 
deepened, the restrictions of the school became the bars of a 
prison. The mediaeval Church, once a pioneer, lost her grip 
on realities, her spiritual outlook became obscured by material 



The Renaissance 349 

ambitions, her faith weakened ; until at last so little sure was 
she in her heart of the complete truth of her teaching that 
she opposed and denounced criticism or discovery, much like 
a merchant who is secretly afraid that his methods of business 
may be obsolete refuses to entertain ' newfangled notions ' that 
would open his eyes. 

When Columbus laid his scheme for crossing the Atlantic 
before a council of bishops and leading members of the Spanish 
universities, mediaeval knowledge derided his presumption by 
quoting texts from the Old Testament and various statements of 
St. Augustine and other Fathers of the Church. There could 
be no Antipodes, they argued, because it was distinctly said that 
the world was peopled by the descendants of Noah, and how 
could such men have crossed these miles of ocean? Many 
similar objections were raised and the mariner's project con- 
demned, just as Roger Bacon had been judged a heretic for his 
scientific inquiries two hundred years before. 1 It is significant 
of the change of mental outlook that while Roger Bacon wasted 
his last years in prison and Abelard was driven from the 
lecture-hall to a monastery, Columbus found public support, 
vindicated his calculations, and so opened up a new world. 

The great secret of the Renaissance is indeed this release of 
the restless spirit of inquiry after truth, that is as old as human- 
ity itself, and that, swooping like a bird through the door of 
a cage out into the air and sunshine, reckless of danger, carried 
along by the sheer joy of unfettered life, sometimes foolish and 
extravagant in its!zest for experience, was at first too absorbed 
in the glory and interest of freedom to feel any regret for the 
prison that had been at least a shelter from the many stormy 
problems that were to rend the modern world. 

Charlemagne had believed that 'without knowledge good 
works were impossible'. The men of the early Renaissance 
were not so intent upon the importance of good works or the 
hope of salvation as their forefathers, but they would have 
assented eagerly to the statement that 'without knowledge any 
true understanding of human life was impossible'. 

1 See p. 207. 



350 The Renaissance 

Had the conditions under which knowledge could be obtained 
remained as restricted as in mediaeval times, the Renaissance on 
its intellectual side would in all probability have become a cult, 
a movement shared by a few learned men and women to which 
the mass of the people in every nation had no clue ; and in this 
way it would have died out like a plant unable to spread its roots. 
Human invention intervened with the discovery of printing, 
which brought the great thoughts or the world out of the 
monastic libraries, where they had been laboriously collected 
and copied by hand, to distribute them, slowly at first but ever 
faster and faster, throughout the busy centres of Europe, where 
brains as well as stomachs are always eager for food. 

It was a German, John Gutenburg, who invented printing by 
means of movable types, but because he had not enough money 
to carry out his design he was forced to borrow from a rich 
citizen of Mainz called John Fust. This Fust treated John 
Gutenburg very badly, for he demanded back the money he had 
lent so soon as he understood the value of the other's secret, and 
by this means forced Gutenburg, when he could not pay, to hand 
over his plant in compensation. Fust then began to print on his 
own account, and when the people of Mainz saw the copies of the 
Bible that he produced, each number an exact replica of the first, 
they declared that he had sold himself to the devil and was 
practising magic. Thus, it is said, started the legend of Doctor 
Faustus that has inspired poets, musicians, and dramatists. 

The first English printer was William Caxton, a Kentishman, 
to view whose press came King and court ii> great amazement, 
interested, but utterly unaware of what a mental revolution this 
small piece of machinery was to bring about. 

The greatest of Italian printers were the Venetians, whose 
famous Aldine press produced volumes that are still the admira- 
tion of the world as well as treasure trove for book-collectors. 
In modern times the desire for knowledge, or rather for informa- 
tion, has become a scramble, and printing has degenerated into 
a trade. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was regarded 
as an art, and Aldus Manutius, the Roman who established his 
press at Venice, intending to reproduce an edition of all the 



c II Moro' 351 

Greek authors then known, was a great scholar, who modelled 
his letters on the handwriting of the Italian poet Petrarch, and 
gathered around him the most intellectual and enterprising 
minds of his day to advise and help him. It was at the Aldine 
press that one of the leaders of the Dutch Renaissance, 
Erasmus, had several of his books printed, and Venice at 
this time became a centre for scholars, and for all whose minds 
were alive with a thirst for new impressions. 

Fifteenth-century Italy was not, on the surface, so very different 
from Italy in the fourteenth. The complete domination of the 
five Powers, foreshadowed in the earlier century, had become 
fixed, and three of them — Milan, Florence, and Naples — had 
succeeded in forming an alliance to preserve the balance 
of power in the peninsula, and to keep at bay the ambitions 
of Venice, whose empire was still spreading over the mainland. 
In Naples ruled Ferrante I, an illegitimate son of Alfonso V of 
Aragon, a typical despot like the Angevins his father had replaced. 
In Milan the Visconti had merged themselves in the House of 
Sforza, through a clever ruse of one of the most famous of 
mediaeval coudottieri, Francesco Sforza, who, besieging his 
master, Filippo Maria Visconti, in Milan in 1441, had forced 
him to give him his only daughter and heiress Bianca in 
marriage, and then to acknowledge him as his successor. 

The grim traditions established by the Visconti continued 
under this new family, christened with their very names. 
Francesco's son, Galeazzo Maria, whose life was spent in 
debauch, is said to have poisoned his mother and buried his 
subjects alive. When he was assassinated, his brother, Ludovico, 
called from his swarthy complexion // Moro, or 'the Moor', 
seized the reins of government, and proceeded to act on behalf 
of his young nephew, Gian Galeazzo, whom he kept in the back- 
ground at Pavia, declaring him a helpless invalid. 

Philip de Commines describes Ludovico as 'clever, but very 
nervous and cringing when he was afraid : a man without faith 
when he thought it to his advantage to break his word '. Out- 
wardly he displayed the genial manners customary in a Renais- 
sance prince, and presided at Milan over a court so famed for 



25 2 The Renaissance 

its hospitality, wit, and intellect that it drew within its circle 
painters, sculptors, writers, and scholars, as well as military 
heroes and men of fashion. 

It will be seen that Italy opened her arms wide to the new 
spirit of intellectual and artistic enjoyment. Venice, Naples, 
Milan, each vied with the other in attracting and rewarding 
genius : even the Popes at Rome, whose natural instinct as the 
guardian of mediaeval tradition was to distrust freedom of 
thought, were influenced by the atmosphere around them, and to 
Pope Nicholas V the world owes the foundation of the wonder- 
ful Vatican Library. 

To the Queen of the Renaissance states we turn last — to 
Florence, the ' City of Flowers ', that we left distracted by the 
internal discords of her 'Blacks' and 'Whites', and by her 
wars against Filippo Maria Visconti. The turning of the 
century had seen great changes in Florence, the whittling away 
of the old ideal of liberty that would brook no master, so that 
she became willing to accept the domination of a family super- 
ficially disguised as a freely elected government. 

The Medici were no royal stock, nor were they flaunting 
condottieri like the Sforza, but a house of bankers, who by brains 
and solid hard work had built up for itself a position of 
respect, not only in Florence, but also throughout Europe, 
where their loans had secured the fortunes of many a monarchy 
that would otherwise have tumbled in -ruins owing to lack of 
funds. It was the advantage of such monarchies to preserve 
the credit of the House of Medici, and so the bankers gained 
outside influence to aid their ambitions at home. 

Within Florence the Medici posed as common-sense men of 
business, unassuming citizens, easy of access, ready friends, 
ever the supporters, while they were climbing the ladder of civic 
fame, of the popular party that loved to shout ' Liberty ! ' in the 
streets, while it voted her destroyers into public offices. 

Cosimo de Medici, the first of the family to establish a position 
of supremacy, was related to many of the nobles debarred by 
their rank from any share in the government : but, though he 
won the allegiance of this faction, he took care to claim no 



Cosimo de Medici 353 

honour himself that might frighten the public mind with terrors 
of a despot. Instead, simply clad and almost unattended, he 
walked through the streets, chatting in friendly equality with 
the merchants he met, many of whose interests were identical or 
wrapped up with his own financial projects ; discussing agricul- 
ture with the Tuscan farmers like a country gentleman, freely 
spending his money on the schemes of the working classes, or 
scattering it amongst beggars. 

When he died his mourning fellow citizens inscribed on his 
tomb the words Pater Patriae, 'Father of his Country'. They 
had felt the benefits received through Cosimo's government : 
they had not realized, or were indifferent to, the chains with 
which he had bound them. Some bitter enemies he had, of 
course, aroused, but these with quiet but remorseless energy he 
had swept from his path. It was his custom to sap the fortunes 
of possible rivals by immense exactions— to make them pay in 
fact for the liberal government, for which he would afterwards 
receive the praise, while drawing away their friends and 
supporters by bribery and threats. At last, ruined and deserted, 
they would be driven from the city ; and here even Cosimo did 
not rest, since his influence at foreign courts enabled him to 
hunt his prey from one refuge to another until they died, 
impotently cursing the name of Medici, a warning to malcontents 
of the length and breadth of a private citizen's revenge. 

The Medici, it has been said, ' used taxes as other men use 
their swords ', and the charge of deliberate corruption that has 
been brought against them is undeniable. ' It is better to injure 
the city than to ruin it,' once declared Cosimo himself, adding 
cynically, ' It takes more to direct a government than to sit and 
tell one's beads.' 

Neither he nor his descendants were the type of ruler 
represented by Charlemagne or Alfred the Great. Their ideals 
were frankly low, with self-interest in the foreground, however 
skilfully disguised. When this has been admitted, however, 
it should be also remembered that Cosimo employed no army of 
hired ruffians to terrorize fellow citizens as the Visconti had 
done. Florence was willing to be corrupted, and if she lost the 

2627 A a 



354 The Renaissance 

freedom she had loved in theory, yet she rose under the 
benevolent despotism of the Medici to a greater height of 
material and political prosperity than ever before or since in her 
history. ' The authority that they possessed in Florence and 
throughout Christendom ', says Machiavelli, ' was not obtained 
without being merited.' 

It was under the fostering care of the Medici that Florence, 
more than any of the other Italian states, became the home of 
the intellectual Renaissance, from which the ' New Learning ' 
was to radiate out across the world. This intellectual movement 
was twofold. Still under mediaeval influence, it began at first 
by finding its inspiration in the past, and so introduced a great 
classical revival, in which manuscripts of Greek and Latin 
authors and statues of gods and nymphs were almost as much 
revered as relics of the saints in an earlier age. Rich men 
hastened on journeys to the East in order to purchase half- 
burned fragments of literature from astonished Greeks, while in 
the lecture-halls of Italy eager pupils clamoured for fresh light 
on ancient philosophy and history. So great was the enthusiasm 
that it is said one famous scholar's hair turned white with grief 
when he learned of the shipwreck of a cargo of classical books. 

Cosimo de Medici had been a 'friend and patron of learned 
men'; but it was in the time of his grandson, Lorenzo 'the 
Magnificent', that the Renaissance reached its height in 
Florence. It was Lorenzo who founded the ' Platonic Academy ' 
in imitation of the old academies of Greek philosophers, an 
assembly that became the battle-ground of the sharpest and most 
brilliant intellects of the day. Here were fought word-tourna- 
ments, often venomous in the intensity of their partisanship, 
between defenders of the views of Plato and of Aristotle : here 
were welcomed like princes cultured Greeks, driven into exile 
by Mahometan invasion, certain of crowded and enthusiastic 
audiences if only they were prepared to lecture on the 
literary treasures of their race. The enthusiasm' recalled the 
days when Abelard held Paris spellbound by his reasoning on 
theology, but showed how far away had slipped the age of 
dialectics. 



The New Learning 355 

The last great name amongst the schoolmen is that of Duns 
Scotus, a Franciscan of the thirteenth century, who raised the 
process of logical reasoning to such a fine art that it has been 
said of him, ' he reasoned scholasticism out of human reach \ 
Ordinary theologians could not dispute with him, since it made 
their brains reel even to try and follow his arguments, so at last 
they snapped their fingers at him, crying, ' Oh, Duns ! Duns ! ' 
Thus by his excessive skill in intellectual juggling he reduced 
himself and his subject to absurdity, and ' Dunce' has passed down 
to posterity as a fitting name for some one unreasonably stupid. 

Scholasticism, the glory of mediaeval lecture-halls, held no 
thrill or charm for men of the Renaissance, and though Aristotle 
was still revered and a great deal of labour expended on trying 
to make his views and those of Plato match with current 
religious beliefs, yet the spirit that underlay this attempt was 
wholly different to the efforts of mediaeval minds. 

' Salvation ', ' The City of God ' — such words and phrases 
had been keys to the thought of the Middle Ages from St. 
Augustine to St. Dominic and St. Thomas Aquinas. To 
Renaissance minds there was but one master-word, ' Humanity '. 

What message had these classical philosophers, that tradition 
held had lived in a golden age, for struggling humanity more than 
a thousand years later ? The men and women of the Renaissance, 
as they put this question, hoped that the answers they discovered 
would agree with the Faith that the Church had taught them ; 
but there was no longer the same insistence that they must or be 
disregarded as heresy. The interest in an immortal soul had 
become mingled with interest in what was human and transitory, 
with the beauty and charm of this life as well as with the glory 
of the next. 

Searching after beauty, no longer under the stern school- 
mistress ' tradition ', but led by that will-o'-the-wisp ' literary 
instinct', the poets and authors under the influence of the 
Renaissance gradually turned from the use of Latin and Greek 
to that more natural medium of expression, their own language. 

This was the second aspect of the ' New Learning ', the 
disappearance of the belief that Latin and Greek alone were 

a a 2 



356 The Renaissance 

literary, and the gradual linking up of mediaeval with modern 
scholarship by the discovery that the growth of national ideals 
and aspirations could best be expressed in a living national 
tongue. The forerunners of this movement lived long before the 
period that we usually call the Renaissance. Thus Dante, 
greatest of mediaeval minds, was inspired to employ his native 
Italian in his masterpiece, the Divina Commedia, that, had his 
genius been less original, might have been merely a classical 
imitation. Petrarch, the friend of Rienzi and lover of liberty, 
who lived at the papal court at Avignon, was half-ashamed of his 
Italian sonnets, yet it is by their charm still more than by 
his Latin letters that he lives to-day, as Boccaccio by the witty 
easy-flowing style of his tales. 

These are the names of literary ' immortals ', and perhaps it 
may seem strange to find, when we pass from them to the ' New 
Learning' itself, that the greater part of the works published by 
members of the ' Platonic Academy ' and other intellectual circles 
are now as dead as the dialectics of the schoolmen. Yet it is 
still harder, if we turn their pages, to believe that such florid 
sentences and long-drawn arguments could ever have stirred 
men's blood to a frenzy of enthusiasm or passion. The 
explanation lies in the fact that for all the charm of its newly-won 
freedom, the Renaissance, on its literary side, was not a time of 
creation but of criticism and inquiry. Its leaders were too bus}' 
clearing away outworn traditions, collecting material for fresh 
thought, and laying literary foundations, to build themselves 
with any breadth of vision. Where they paused exhausted, or 
failed, the 'giants' of the modern world were able to erect their 
masterpieces. 

Lorenzo ' the Magnificent ' himself we can remember for the 
genuine love of nature and poetry apparent in his sonnets, but 
his claim to remain immortal in the world's history must rest, 
not on his literary achievements, but on his generous patronage 
and appreciation of scholars and artists, as well as on the political 
wisdom that made him the first statesman of his day. 

If the literature of the Renaissance was mainly experimental 
in character, painting was pre-eminently its finished glory — the 



Giotto 3$y 

representation of that sense of beauty in nature and in human 
life from which the Middle Ages had turned away, as from 
a snare set by the Devil to distract souls from Paradise. Here 
again, in painting, there is a twofold aspect : the artist mind 
seeking in the past as well as aspiring to the future for inspira- 
tion to guide his brush. It was in the life of St. Francis, 'the 
little Brother of Assisi ', that Giotto, the great forerunner of the 
' new ' art, found that sense of humanity idealized that spurred 
him to break away from the old conventional Byzantine models, 
stiff, decorative, and inhuman, in order to attempt the realization 
of life as he saw it around him in the street and field. 

Cimabue, a famous Florentine painter, had found Giotto as a 
shepherd lad, cutting pictures of the sheep grouped round him 
with a stone upon the rockside. He carried the boy away to be 
his apprentice, but the pupil soon excelled the master and not 
merely Florence but all Italy heard of his wondrous colours and 
designs. 'He took nature for his guide,' says Leonardo 
da Vinci ; and many are the tales of this kindly peasant genius, 
small and ugly in appearance but full of the joy and humour of 
the world that he studied so shrewdly. The Angevin King 
Robert of Naples once asked him to suggest a symbol of his own 
turbulent Southern kingdom, whereupon the artist drew a 
donkey saddled, sniffing at another saddle lying on the ground. 
' Such are your subjects,' he remarked, ' that every day would 
seek a new master.' No politician could have made a more 
fitting summary of mediaeval Naples. 

Giotto's chief fame to-day lies in his frescoes of the life of St. 
Francis on the walls of the double chapel at Assisi and in the 
Franciscan Church of Santa Croce in Florence. Most of them, 
damaged by the action of time and weather on the rough plaster, 
have been repaired to their disadvantage, though a few remain 
unharmed to show the painter's clear, delicate colouring and 
boldness of outline. To the average sightseer to-day they seem 
perhaps just legendary pictures, more or less crude in design, but 
when Giotto painted we must remember that the crowds who 
watched his brush in breathless admiration read as they gazed 
the story of the most human of saints — a man who had but 



358 The Renaissance 

lately walked amongst the Umbrian hills, and whose words 
and deeds were to them more vivid than many a living 
utterance. 

To understand what the genius of Giotto meant to his own day 
we must consider the stiff unreality of former art, just as we 
cannot realize the greatness of Columbus by thinking of a modern 
voyage from the Continent to America, but only by recalling the 
primitive navigation of his time. Giotto, like Columbus, had 
many imitators and followers, some of them famous names, but the 
pioneer work that he had done for art was commemorated at the 
Renaissance when, by the orders of Lorenzo de Medici, a Latin 
epitaph was placed on his tomb containing these words : ' Lo ! 
I am he by whom dead Art was restored to life ... by whom Art 
became one with Nature.' 

It would be impossible to condense satisfactorily in a few short 
paragraphs the triumphant history of Renaissance painting, the 
rapid development of which Giotto and his ' school ' had made 
practicable, or even to give a slight sketch of the artists on whom 
that history depends. Never before has so much genius been 
crowded into so few years ; but before we leave this pre-eminent 
age in modern Art, there is one arresting figure who must 
be described, a man^who more than any other embodies the 
spirit of the Renaissance at its best, Leonardo da Vinci, ' fore- 
most amongst the supreme masters of the world'. 

Leonardo '■ the Florentine ', as he liked to call himself, 
was born in the fortified village of Vinci midway between 
Florence and Pisa. The illegitimate son of a notary, born as it 
would seem to no great heritage, he was yet early distinguished 
amongst his fellows. 

'The richest gifts of Heaven,' says Vasari, 'are sometimes 
showered upon the same person, and beauty, grace, and genius, 
are combined in so rare a manner in one man that, to whatever 
he may apply himself, every action is so divine that all others are 
left behind him.' This reads like exaggeration until we turn to the 
facts that are known about Da Vinci's life, and find he is all in- 
deed Vasari described— a giant amongst his fellows in physique 
and intellect, and still more in practical imagination. So strong 



Leonardo da Vinci 359 

was he that with his fingers he could bend a horseshoe straight, 
so full of potent charm for all things living that his presence in 
a room would draw men and women out of sadness, while in the 
streets the wildest horses would willingly yield to his taming 
power. Of the cruelty that rests like a stain on the Middle Ages 
there was in him no trace — rather that hot compassion for 
suffering and weakness so often allied with strength. It is told 
of him as of St. Francis that he would buy the singing-birds sold 
in cages in the street that he might set them free. 

His copy-books are full of the drawings of horses, and probably 
his greatest work of art, judged by the opinion of his day and 
the rough sketches still extant of his design, was the statue he 
modelled for Ludovico 'II Moro ' of Francesco Sforza, the 
famous condottiere poised on horseback. Unfortunately it 
perished almost at once, hacked in pieces by the French soldiery 
when they drove Ludovico from his capital some years later. 

Leonardo has been called the 'true founder of the Italian 
School of oil-painting'. His most celebrated picture, 'The 
Last Supper ', painted in oils as an experiment, on the walls of 
a convent near Milan, began to flake away, owing to the damp, 
even before the artist's death. It has been so constantly re- 
touched since, that very little, save the consummate art in the 
arrangement of the figures, and the general dramatic simplicity 
of the scene depicted, is left to show the master-hand. Even 
this is enough to convey his genius. Amongst the most famous 
of his works that still remain are his ' Mona Lisa ', sometimes 
called 'La Gioconda', the portrait of a Neapolitan lady, and the 
' Madonna of the Rocks', both in the gallery of the Louvre. 

Leonardo excelled his age in engineering, in his knowledge 
of anatomy and physics, in his inventive genius that led him to 
guess at the power of steam, and struggle over models of aero- 
planes, at which his generation laughed and shrugged their 
shoulders. He himself took keen pleasure in such versatility, 
but his art, that held other men spellbound with admiration, 
would plunge him in depression. ' When he sat down to paint 
he seemed overcome with fear', says one account of him, and 
describes how he would alter and finally destroy, in despair ot 



360 The Renaissance 

attaining his ideal, canvases that those about him considered 
already perfect. It is little wonder then that few finished works 
came from the brush of this indefatigable worker ; but his 
influence on his age and after-centuries was none the less 
prodigious. 

Leonardo stands for all that was best in the Renaissance — 
its zest for truth, its eager vitalit}^ and love of experiment, but 
most of all for its sympathy. He is the embodiment of that 
motto that seems more than any other to express the Renais- 
sance outlook: Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto — 
' I am a man, and nothing pertaining to mankind is foreign to 
nry nature.' 

Italy, we have seen, was pre-eminently the home of the Renais- 
sance — the teacher destined to give the world the ' New Learning ' 
as she had preserved the old during the Dark Ages. In those 
sunny days, when Lorenzo 'the Wise', as well as 'the Magni- 
ficent ', ruled in Florence, and by his statesmanship preserved 
so neat a balance of politics that the peninsula, divided by five 
ambitious Powers, yet remained at peace, a glorious future 
seemed assured ; but in 1492, the year that Columbus discovered 
America, Lorenzo died. 'The peace of Italy is dead also,' 
exclaimed a statesman with prophetic insight, when he heard 
the news : and indeed the stability and moderation that Lorenzo 
and his house had symbolized was soon threatened. 

In Florence, Wisdom was succeeded by Folly in the person 
of Piero, Lorenzo's son, an Orsini on his mother's side, and an 
inheritor to the full of the haughty, intractable temperament of 
the Roman baronage. Playing his football in the streets amongst 
the shopkeepers' open booths, insolent to the merchants his 
father had courted, reckless of advice, Piero was soon to learn 
that a despotism, such as that of the Medici, founded not on 
armies but on public goodwill, falls at the first adverse wind. 
This wind, a whirlwind for Italy, blew from France ; but it was 
Ludovico '11 Moro', not the young Medici, who actually sowed 
the seed. 

' Nervous and cringing,' as Philip de Commines had described 



French Invasion of Italy 361 

him, Ludovico had found himself involved by his treatment of 
his nephew in a fog of suspicions and fears. Left to himself, 
uneducated and ailing in health, Gian Galeazzo Sforza would 
never have dared to thwart his ambitious uncle; but he had 
married a Neapolitan princess of stronger fibre, a granddaughter 
of Ferrante I, and when she complained to her relations, and 
they in turn remonstrated with ' II Moro', trouble began. 

It seemed to Ludovico, assailed by secret visions of Naples 
allying herself with Milan's most dreaded enemy Venice, or 
even with Florence and Rome to secure revenge and his own 
downfall, that he must hastily give up the idea that Lorenzo had 
advocated of a balance of power within the peninsula itself, 
and look instead beyond the mountains for help and support. 
Mediaeval annals could give many instances of Popes and former 
rulers of Milan who had taken this same unpatriotic step, while 
a ready excuse could be found for invoking the aid of France, 
on account of the French King's descent from the Second House 
of Anjou, that Alfonso V, Ferrante's father, had driven from 
Naples. 1 

Acting, then, from motives of personal ambition, not from any 
wide conception of statecraft, Ludovico persuaded Charles VIII 
of France, son of Louis XI, that honour and glory lay in his 
renewal of the old Angevin claims to Naples, and in 1494, with 
a great flourish of trumpets, the French expedition started 
across the Alps. ■ I will assist in making you greater than 
Charlemagne,' Ludovico had boasted, when dangling his bait 
before the young French King's eyes ; but the results of what 
he had intended were so far beyond his real expectations as to 
give him new cause for ' cringing and fear '. ' The French,' said 
Pope Alexander VI sarcastically, ' needed only a child's wooden 
spurs and chalk to mark up their lodgings for the night.' 

Almost without opposition, and where they encountered it 
achieving easy victories, the French marched through Italy from 
north to south, entering Florence, that had driven Piero and his 
brothers into exile, compelling the hasty submission of Rome, 

1 See Genealogical Table, p. 382. 



3 62 The Renaissance 

sweeping the Aragonese from Naples, whose fickle population 
came out with cheers to greet their new conquerors. 

Certainly the causes of this victory were not due to the young 
conqueror himself, with his ungainly body and over-developed 
head, with his swollen ambitions and feeble brain, with his pious 
talk of a crusade against the East, and the idle debauch for 
which he and his subjects earned unenviable notoriety. Corn- 
mines, a Frenchman with a shrewd idea of his master's incom- 
petence, believed that God must have directed the conquering 
armies, since the wisdom of man had nothing to say to it ; but 
Italian historians found the cause of their country's humiliation 
in her political and military decadence. 

We have seen how ' Companies ' of hired soldiers held Italy 
in thrall during the fourteenth century ; but with the passing of 
years what was once a serious business had become a complicated 
kind of chess with mercenary levies for pawns. Fifteenth- 
century condottieri were as great believers in war as ever 
Sir John Hawkwood ; but, susceptible to the veneer of civilization 
that glosses the Renaissance, they had lost the mediaeval taste 
for bloodshed. What they retained was the desire to prolong 
indeterminate campaigns in order to draw their pay, while 
reducing the dangers and hardships involved to the least 
adequate pretence of real warfare. Here is Machiavelli's 
sarcastic commentary : 

'They spared no effort,' he says, 'to relieve themselves and 
their men from fatigue and danger, not killing one another in 
battle but making prisoners . . . they would attack no town by 
night nor would those within make sorties against their besieging 
foes. Their camps were without rampart or trench. They 
fought no winter campaigns.' 

Before the national levies of France, rough campaigners with 
no taste for military chess but only determined on as speedy a 
victory as possible, the make-believe armies of Italy were mown 
down like ninepins or ran away. Thus clashed two opposing 
systems— one real, the other by this time almost wholly 
artificial — and because of its noise and stir, 1494, the year of 
Charles VIII's invasion of Italy, is often taken as the boundary- 



End of the Middle Ages 363 

line between mediaeval and modern times, just as the year 476, 
when Romulus Augustulus gave up his crown, is accepted as 
the beginning of the Middle Ages. In both cases it is not the 
events of the actual year that can be said to have created the 
change. They are merely the culminating evidence of the end 
of an old order of things and the beginning of a new. 

By 1494 Constantinople was in the hands of the Turks : 
Columbus had discovered America : John Gutenburg had 
invented his printing-press : Vasco da Gama was meditating his 
voyage to India. All these things were witness of ' a new birth ', 
the infancy of a modern world ; but the year 1494 stands also as 
evidence of the death of an old, the mediaeval. 

Stung by the oppression and insolence of their conquerors, 
Italian armies and intrigue were to drive the French in the 
years to come temporarily out of Naples ; but in spite of this 
success the effect of Charles VI IPs military 'walk-over' was 
never to be effaced. Italy, in Roman times the centre of 
Europe from which all law and order had radiated, had clung to 
a fiction of this power and glory through mediaeval days. Now 
at last the sham was exposed, and before the forces of nationality 
her boasted supremacy collapsed. The centre of political 
gravity had changed, and with it the traditions and ideals for 
which the supremacy of Italy had stood. 

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73. 

Invention of Printing H35 

Caxton's Press x 474 

The Aldine Press 1494 

Duns Scotus .....'.... (died) 1308 

Petrarch 1304-74 

Giotto 1276-1337 

Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519 

Ferrante I of Naples (died) 1494 

French Invasion of Italy *494 



SOME AUTHORITIES ON 
MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

Periods of European History. 
The Dark Ages. C. W. Oman. 
The Empire and Papacy. T. F. Tout. 
The Close of the Middle Ages. R. Lodge. 

Text-Books of European History. 
Mediaeval Europe. K. Bell. 
The Renaissance and the Reformation. E. M. Tanner. 

Epochs of Modern History. 

The Beginning of the Middle Ages. R. Church. 
The Normans in Europe. A. H. Johnson. 
The Crusades. G. W. Cox. 
Edward III. W. Warburton. 

Home University Library. 

Mohammedanism. D. S. Margoliouth. 
Mediaeval Europe. H. W. Davis. 
The Renaissance. E. Sichel. 

Foreign Statesmen Series. 

Charles the Great. T. Hodgkin. 
Philip Augustus. W. H. Hutton. 
Cosimo de Medici. D. K. Ewart. 

Mediaeval Town Series. Venice, Assist, &c. 

Heroes of the Nations. 

Alfred ' The Great'. B. A. Lees. 
Theodoric the Goth. T. Hodgkin. 
Charlefnagne. H. W. Davis. 
Columbus. Washington Irving. 
Isabel of Castile. I. Plunket. 
The Cid Campeador. H. Butler-Clarke. 



366 Some Authorities on 

Heroes of the Nations [continued). 

Prince Henry of Portugal. R. Beazley. 
Lorenzo de Medici. A. Armstrong. 
Mahomet. D. S. Margoliouth. 
Saladin. S. Lane Poole. 
Charles the Bold. R. Putnam, and others. 

Story of the Nations. 

Germany. S. Baring-Gould. 
Spain. Watts. 
Moors in Spam. Lane Poole. 
Turkey. Lane Poole. 
Byzantine Empire. Oman. - 
Hansa Towns. H. Zimmern. 
Denmark and Sweden. Stefanson. 
Norway. Boyesen, and others. 

General Works. 

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon. 

The Cambridge Mediaeval History. 

The Cambridge Modern History (vol. i). 

The Mediaeval Mind. Osborne Taylor. 

Illustrations of the History of Mediaeval Thought. Lane Poole. 

History of Latin Christianity. H. Milman. 

A Handbook of European History. 476-1871. A. Hassall. 

A Notebook of Mediaeval History. 328-1453. R. Beazley. 

A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Thatcher and McNeal. 

The Monks of the West (vol. v). Gasquet. 

The Black Death. Gasquet. 

Histoire Generate. Lavisse et Rambaud. • 

History of the Papacy during the Reformation (vol. i). Creighton. 

History of the Inqtiisition in the Middle Ages. H. C. Lea. 

A Book of Discovery. M. B. Synge. 

The C?-usades. Archer and Kingsford. 

The Normans in Europe. Haskins. 

Introduction to the History of Weste?-n Europe. T. H. Robinson. 

Italy. 

Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire. S. Dill. 

Social Life in Rome, &c. Warde-Fowler. 

Italy and her Invaders. T. Hodgkin. > 

Life and Times of Hildebrand. A El Mathew. 



Mediaeval History 367 

Italy (continued). 

Innocent the Great. G. H. Pirie-Gordon. 

History of Rome in the Middle Ages. Gregorovius. 

From Francis to Dante. Coulton. 

Dante and his Time. C. Federn. 

Francois d' Assise. P. Sabatier. 

Francis of Assist. Little. 

History of the Italian Republics. Sismondi. 

The Age of the Condottieri. O. Browning. 

Guelfs and Ghibellines. O. Browning. 

Studies in Venetian History (vol. i). H. Brown. 

The Painters of Florence. J. Cartwright. 

The Prince. Machiavelli. 

History of Florence. Machiavelli. 

France and Spain. 

Histoire de France (vol. i). Duruy. 

The Court of a Saint. W. Knox. 

Chronicle. Joinville. 

Histoire de la Jacquerie. S. Luce. 

The Maid of France. A.Lang. 

Me'moires. Philippe de Commines. 

Chronicles. Froissart. 

La France sous Philippe le Bel. Boutaric. 

History of Charles the Bold. Kirk. 

Histoire de France. Michelet. 

The Spanish People. Martin Hume. 

The Rise of the Spanish Empire. R. Bigelow Merriman. 

Ferdinand and Isabella. Prescolt. 

Christians and Moors in Spain. C. Yonge. 

Germany. 

The Mediaeval Empire. H. A. L. Fisher. 

Holy Roman Empire. Bryce. 

Germany in the Early and Later Middle Ages (two vols.). Stubbs. 

The Life of Frederick If &c. Kington. 



368 Chronological Summary, 476—1494 



Eastern 


Europe and Asia Minor. 






France and Spain. 


475-49 1 


Emperor Zeno. 




481-511 
486 


Clovis, King of the Franks. 
Battle of Soissons. 


491-518 


Emperor Anastasius. 








518-527 


Emperor Justin I. 








5 2 7-565 


Emperor Justinian. 








565-578 


Emperor Justin II. 




585 


Visigothic Conquest of 
Spain complete. 


610-641 


Emperor Heraclius. 








622 


The ' Hijrah '. 








626 


Siege of Constantinople 
_ Chosroes. 


by 






627 


Battle of Nineveh. 








634 


Battle of Yermuk. 




628-638 


Dagobert I. 


637 


Jerusalem taken by 
Moslems. 


the 






642-668 


Emperor Constans II. 








668-685 


Emperor Constantine 
(Pogonatus). 


IV 






685-695 | 


Justinian II. 








705-711 | 






712 


Battle of Guadalete. 


715-7*7 


Theodosius III. 




7t4-74i 


Charles Martel, ' Mayor of 


717-740 


Leo ' the Isaurian '. 




732 

75* ' 


the Palace'. 
Battle of Poitiers. 

Dethronement of the Mero- 
vingians. 


786-809 


Haroun al-Raschid, Ca 
of Bagdad. 


iph 


768-814 


Charlemagne, King of the 
Franks. 


78o-797 


Emperor Constantine VI. 






797-802 


Empress Irene. 




814-840 
842 

843 


Louis I ' the Pious'. 
Oath of Strasbourg. 
Treaty of Verdun. 



Chronological Summary, 476—1494 369 



Italy. 



476 



489 

493-526 
556 

568 



Romulus Augustulus de- 
posed, Odoacer becomes 
' Patrician '. 

Invasion of Italy by the 
Ostrogoths. 

Theoderic, King of Italy. 

Conquest of Italy by Jus- 
tinian. 

Conquest of North Italy by 
the Lombards. 



590-604 Pope Gregory I 
Great '. 



the 



741-752 


Pope Zacharias. 


75 2 


End of Exarchate of Ra- 




venna. 


75 2 -757 


Pope Stephen II. 


772-795 


Pope Adrian I. 


795-816 


Pope Leo III. 


800 


Charlemagne crowned in 




Rome. 



858-867 Pope Nicholas I. 

2527 



Central and Northern Europe. 



io Landing of the Angles in 
Britain. 



563 St. Columba's Mission to 

Scotland. 
577 Victory of West Saxons at 

Dyrham. 



597 Mission of St. Augustine to 
England. 



743 



Boniface becomes Arch- 
bishop of Mainz. 



837-878 Struggle between West 

Saxons and Danes. 
843-876 Louis ' the German '. 



B b 



Ijo Chronological Summary, 4.76-1494. 



Eastern Europe and Asia Minor. 

873-867 Rupture between Churches 

of East and West. 
867-886 Emperor Basil I. 



1039 



' Seljuk ' Turks conquer 
Caliphate of Bagdad. 



1081-1118 Emperor Alexius Comme- 

nus I. 
1096-1099 The First Crusade. 

1099 Capture of Jerusalem by 

Crusaders. 
1118 Orderof Templars founded. 

1146-1149 Second Crusade. 

1 187 Saladin takes Jerusalem. 
1189-1192 Third Crusade. 



France and Spain. 



880-888 Charles 'the Fat', Em- 
peror of the West. 
885 Siege of Paris by the North- 
men. 
909 Foundation of Cluni. 
898-929 Charles 'the Simple'. 
987-996 Hugh Capet, King ot 
France. 



1 03 1 



Break up of Caliphate of 
Cordova. 



1 138 St. Bernard attacks Abelard. 
ir53 Death of St. Bernard. 
1 180-1223 Philip II 'Augustus' of 
France. 



1202 Fourth Crusade. 
1204-1261 Latin Empire of Constanti- 
nople. 
1204-1260 Empire of Nicea. 



1228-1229 Crusade of Frederick II. 



1248-1256 Seventh Crusade. St. Louis 
invades Egypt and Pales- 
tine. 



1204 Philip II conquers Nor- 
mandy. 

1209 Albigensian Crusade. 

t2i2 The Children's Crusade. 

1212 Battle of Las Navas de 
Tolosa. 

1214 Battle of Bouvines. 



1226-1270 Louis IX of France (St. 
Louis). 
1230 Union of Leon and Castile. 



Chronological Summary, 476—1494 371 





Italy. 


Centra 


/ and Northern Europe. 






871-901 


Alfred ' the Great ', King of 
Wessex. 






878 


Peace of Wedmore. 






911-918 


Emperor Conrad I. 






919-936 


Emperor Henry I ' the 
Fowler '. 






936-973 


Emperor Otto I. 


962 


Otto I crowned Emperor 


955 


Battle of Augsburg. 




of Rome. 


973-9 8 3 


Emperor Otto II. 






979-1016 


Ethelred II 'the Rede- 
less '. 






983-1002 


Emperor Otto III. 






1003-1024 


Emperor Henry II. 


1046 


Synod of Sutri. 


101 7-1035 


Cnut— King of England. 


1060-1091 


Norman Conquest of Sicily. 


1024-1039 


Emperor Conrad II. 


1073-1085 


Pope Gregory VII (Hilde- 


1039-1056 Emperor Henry III. 




brand). 


1 056- 1 106 


Emperor Henry IV. 


1077 


Humiliation of Henry IV 


1066 


Norman Conquest of Eng- 




at Canossa. 




land. 


1088-1099 


Pope Urban II. 










1106-1125 


Emperor Henry V. 






1 122 


Concordat of Worms. 






H37- II 5 2 


Emperor Conrad III. 


1176 


Battle of Legnano. 


u53-ii9° 


Emperor Frederick I — 


1 183 


Peace of Constance. 




' Barbarossa'. 






1 1 70 


Murder of Thomas Becket. 


1198-1216 


Pope Innocent III. 


1190-1197 


Emperor Henry VI. 


I2IO 


Innocent III ; excommuni- 
cation of Otto IV. 






I2I6-I227 


Pope Honorius III. 


1215-1250 


Emperor Frederick II. 






1215 


Magna Charta. 


1223 


Foundation of the Fran- 
ciscan Order. 






1225 


Treaty of San Germano. 






I227-I24I 


Pope Gregory IX. 


1226 


Teutonic Order moves to 
Prussia. 


I243-I254 


Pope Innocent IV. 


1256- 1273 


The ' Great Interregnum '. 


1282 


The Sicilian Vespers. 







372 Chronological Summary, 476—1494 



Eastern Europe and Asia Minor. 

1260-1282 Emperor Michael Paleo- 
logus. 
1270 Eighth Crusade. St. Louis 

invades North Africa. 
1201 Fall of Acre. 



1370-1382 King Louis 'the Great' of 
Hungary and Poland. 

1386 Union of Poland and Lithu- 
ania. 
1389 Battle of Kossovo. 



1448-1453 Emperor Constantine XI. 
1 453 Fall of Constantinople. 



France and Spain. 



1285-1314 Philip IV <le Bel' of 
France. 

1309-1376 The Babylonish Captivity. 
1312 Suppression of the Tem- 
plars. 



x 337 Outbreak of the Hundred 
Years' War. 

1346 Battle of Creci. 

1347 English capture Calais. 
1347-1348 The Black Death. 

1356 Battle of Poitiers. 

I 358 The Jacquerie. 

1360 Treaty of Bretigni. 

1367 Battle" of Navarette. 



1415 Battle of Agincourt. 



14 19 Murder of John ' the Fear- 

less '. 

1420 Treaty of Troyes. 

1430 Death of Jeanne d'Arc. 
1440 The Praguerie. 



1453 



End of the Hundred Years' 
War. 

1461-1483 Louis XI of France. 
1483-1498 Charles VIII. 

1492 Columbus discovers Ame- 
rica. 

1498 Vasco da Gama discovers 
Cape route to India. 



Chronological Summary, 476-1494 373 



Italy. 



Central and Northern Europe. 



1294 Celestine V. 
1294-1303 Boniface VIII. 



1347-1354 Rienzi founds the Holy 
Roman Republic. 



1377 Pope Gregory XI returns 
to Rome from Avignon. 
1378-1417 The Great Schism. 

1380 Battle of Chioggia. 

1395 Gian Galeazzo Visconti be- 
comes Duke of Milan. 



1273-1291 Emperor Rudolf I. 

1298-1308 Emperor Albert I. 

1309 Independence of Swiss 
Forest Cantons recog- 
nized. 

1314 Battle of Bannockburn. 

1315 Battle of Morgarten. 
1340 Battle of Sluys. 



1347-1378 Emperor Charles IV, 
1356 The Golden Bull. 

1370 Treaty of Stralsund. 



1417 



Election of Pope Martin V. 
End of the Schism. 



1469-1492 Lorenzo de Medici rules 
Florence. 

1494 Charles VIII invades Italy. 



1380 



1397 



Wycliffe translates the 

Bible. 
The Union of Kalmar. 
1410-1437 Emperor Sigismund. 

1410 Battle of Tannenburg. 
1414-1418 Council of Constance. 
1415 Death of John Huss. 



1431 Council of Basel. 

1436 John Gutenburg invents the 
Printing Press. 
1438-1439 Emperor Albert II. 
1440-1493 Emperor Frederick III. 

1 455-1485 The Wars of the Roses. 

1476 Battles of Granson and 

Morat. 

1477 Battle of Nanci. 



375 



MeDiAevAb GeNGMgcies' 

i fhe Kings of Cngland jrom the Conquest until 
Henry VIT 

2 fhe House of Charlemagne 

3 fhe House of Capet 

4 "fhe House of Valots 

5 fhe Morman Ruler? of Sicily 

6 fhe First 'Ik Second House of Anjou in "Naples 
j fhe House of Araxron in Spain &> Naples* 

$ fhe House of Castile -& beon 

9 fhe CtueJ%'fc Ghibelliner 

10 fhe Dukes- of Burgundy l & House of Habsburg 
n fhe House of Luxemburg 

12 f he PaleoLxrt 



37 6 



IDILUAit) I 
1066-1087 



R0IJ£R5 IDILLIAfmi H6N.RYI 

Duke of Normandy iog--iioo inOj-1135 



ADtLA = SotPHcM 
£art of Blols 



IDILLIAOl tT)A5lLDA=jGtOFFR£Y 

d.uao I Count of Amou 

HeMKY'll 
1154.-11% 



SGfcPHCN. 1135-1154 



HeNRY mAolLDA = HCNRY RICHARD I 

d.liSl theLlon n8c)-ii£)£) 

op Saxonu 



JOHN. 
1199-1*16 



HCN.RY 111 

Kiff-iar2 

- J_ 



fibeAKOR. = ALFONSO IX, 
of Castile 



£DU)ARDl = tL.CAN.OR. 
Ufa -130^ I of Castile 

CDU)ARD1I = ISABCL 
130^-132^ I of France 



£DIDARDIIL=PHILIPPA 



•3ar- '3Tr 



of Hainault- 



CDlRUND 
Carl of Lancaster 

J I 

HCN.RY 

Carl of Lancaster 

J I 

H^NRY 
Duke of Lancastei- 



CDIDARD 



the"I3lackPrince" Duke of York, ofGaunt- 

d.. 1370 14th.. sou) 13rd. soul 



^ r 

JOHH =BLANCHt 



Heiresff of Lancastei- 



RICHARD II RICHARD 

WT'Wd carl of Cambridge 



HCMRYIV PHlLIPPAyJOHN. I 

1399-413 of Portugal 

PRINCC HCMRY 
tlw'Mauiqrator 



RICHARD 
Duke of York, 



HtHRYV = CAiSHcRlNe JOHN. HUCTlPHRcY 

of France Duke of Bedforo Duke of fflbuooster' 
d. 14.35 i. 1447 



fcDIDARDIV 
1451-1483 



RICHARD III 
1483-1485 



H6NR.Y VI 

14-15 - 1461 
(J.1471) 



€DU)ARDV RICHARD CLIZAB65H = HcNRY VII 

(nurdered.1483 Duke of York, 1465-150,9 

Murdered 1463 



Thg ^ngii§h 

Kj^G^FiiQ^THG 

@NQue5'fuNfib 

JleN^RYVII 



377 



CHARL£S mAR56L> 
Ouke of" Australia. (Dayor cif the Palace 

PePlN." the Short" 
Kxngofthe Frank.? 751 -f68 



I 

CHARLOnAGN£ 

King of the Franks' ffl 

£mpcror of the IDcst 8oo-8ia 

CHARL6S PfPIN. 
i.gn K3.ofltalud.810 

BeENAKD 

Kinacf Italy 810-818 



CARLOOlAN. 
King of Australia 

768-771 



LOUIS the Putust 
Cmpcrorof thelDeirr Siz-S^o 



~~1 

L05HAK. PfcTIM LOUIS' CHARLt'S" the Bald" 

emperor of the U)esr Kg. ofAquitaine Kg. rf Germany Kg. of France 
S40-855 i.856 S43-. 8 ! 6 843j 8 ?7 

CHARL£S"theFat" LOUIS II 
fmperor of the IDest Kg. of France 
881-887 877-879 



r — 

LOUIS' III 

Kg. of" France 

879-882 



CARLOfllAK CH ARL£S II I 
Kg. of France "the Simple" 
879- 884 Kg. of France 

892-929 

I 

LOUIS IV 

Kg. of France "d'Outremer" 
93f~954 



L05HAIR. CHARLcS" 

Kg. of France Duke of Lorraine 
954-986 

LOUIS V 

Kg- of France 
"3hc Uoc"d-Jr>r- Nothing 1 ' 
9«6-c,87 



jHGj-IOU^e OJF (HAftie^flDVGNe 



37« 



ODO 
Count <?f Paris- 
Ktmr of die IDest Frank? 



UOl3t°R5 
the Strong 
Duke of the French 

, 

KOBeUS 
King of the IDest Franks- 



jHeHouge 
0JF ^ 

CAPef 



HUGH the Greair 
Count of Paris- 

HUGH CAP£S 
King of France 98^-99^ 

UOBeRCU 
99^-W3 l 

H^KUY I 
10x1- 1060 

I 

PHILIP I 

tofio-itoS 

i 

LOUIS VI 

1108-1137 



LOUIS' VII - m HI eie'ANDE of Aquitaine- Henry U 
1137-1160 13) ADfLA of Cfiampacrne oJ£ng[ani 
Count of Anjou 



PKILIPIL" Augustus" 
1180-122* 

I 

LOUIS Vllly BLANCH6 of CastiU 

lM3~122o" I 

■ - 1 — "I 



LOUIS" IX. 
iSc.Louis) 

I226-I270 

I 

PHILIP M'Stie 12ash" 

127^-1285 



CHAULcS" 
Count of Anjou ck. Prouence 
& King of Sicilu 
1 See Sable VI -First House of Anjou 
in Haples) 



PHILIP IV"U Bel" 
1285-134 



CHARLCSTj (nARGAKfB 
Gunt of Valots I of Sicilu 



I "I 

LOUIS' X. PHILIP V 



131^-1310 



1310"- 132a 



CHARLES' IV 
1322-1328 



ISABcL jcDlDAUDU 
I of Cnaland. 

cDlDARDUl 

of ehq-land 



PHILIP VI 
ofValois- 

Cbci Cable IV -She 
House of Valots) 



379 





CHARbtS" 


4- 




Count of Valcis- 
PHlblPVI 


3hg Houje op 




JOHN, "the Good" 


vaiois 






'35 T'3H 






r 

CHARLES V 


1 1 

bOUlS" PHILlP'theBold" 


1 1 

jeANNe=CHACUJS ISABEL- GIANGAWA2ZO 


rfi 


-1380 


Puke of Anion Duke of Burqundu 
(.See Sable VI- (See Sable X_- Duke 


'the Bad." 
> ofNaaarre 


Viscontt 






Sicorui House of of Burgundy) 
Anjou in Maples) 




=VALeN5IUA 






! 

CHARLfS VI 


1 

LOUIS' = 




" She (Rad"' 


Duke of Orleans 


Visronti 






1380-1404 


murdered 140^ 
vte*=HeUEYV CH AULAS' 


CHA 


RLesvu 


1 
CA5H6R1 


1422- 14ft 




1 of £nqtand Duke of Orleans- 


1 

LOUIS - XI 




HeiRYVI 




40-1-.A83 




of Grurland 




CHARLES VllL 


LOUIS XII 


1483—498 




'49$-'5»$ i 



oANCGeD D£ HAUSeVILLfi- 



n 



^HGjiQ^AN 



J^ 



UHLLIAmDeHAUSeVILLt ROBatfOIISCARD ROBfUSI ^\I1[6<RC 

Duke of Apulia Count of Sictlu 

1000-1085 



R0G£R II 



QF 5iCiIX 



Kinj of ilcitu &Naples- 
d.1154 



■aoGtVL wibbikca. coussmce =f eenvenon HenRY vi 



Duke of Apulia "the Bad" 



jofApu 



oAkcnev uoilliaoi 

"the Good" 



empeooR reeDemcicu 



3»o 

LOUIS' VIII of France 
1M3 ~ \i*6 

CHARb&T 
Count of Anjou StProuence 
y\NJQU IN & Kim of SlrtluS. Natter CdisSg) 

CHAULeril 






NAPie^ 



6 



r 



CHARLES' (TlAU3eb 



CAUOBeRo 
of Huncraru 



rzonevns 

Kinor of Naples- 

CHARber 
of Calabria 



JOHM. CnARGAUe5=CHAEUe5 
of Durazzo of Valets' 

(See Sable IV for House 
of Valois &. also She 
Second House of Anjou 
in Naples - ] 



bOUlb" 
the Great 



ANDREI" =JOANNA I IT2AR1A = CHARLef bOUIS" 



Kino of Hun<raru 
.1 



d. 13S2. 



flutS mUMD = 01ARIA HeDlDIG = JAG£bbO 
of Luxe mbura of Lithuania 

(King LadislasV 
of Poland) 



d. 1348 



fTzARGARtS = CHARl^m 
I of Durazzo 

1 



bADISLAS" 

d.IAlzJ. 



JOANNA II 



' 12ene le Bon disinherited, his 
grandson Ke'ne Duke of 
Lorraine and left his daims 
to Maples to his nepheu> Charles- 
with remainder to the French 
Croum. In this u>au Charles VIII 
mas enabled to claim the 
Neapolitan tlirorw. 



CHARbfi" = (RARGAR£c 



Count of Valois 



ofSEcthj 



CHARbtSV 
136^-1380 



PHIblPVI 

'3^8 ~ '35° 
JOHN- "the Good" 
IK".- '3^ 

bOUIS Duke of Anjou 
<i-'3 8 5 
bOUI? II 

d.I-ilf 



TlNJSU in 

N7\PI6£ 



bouts-iu 
^- 434 



R£N£ b£ BON* 
d. 1480 



CHARbeS" 
Duke of Maine 

I 

YObANr>c = FRtDt*RICK, CHARLfS - 

of Vaudemonr d. 1 j.6\ 
RcMt I Duke of borraine 



mARV =jCHARL«VIl 
of France 



CHARbtV VIII 



38 1 



7 



ALFONSO II 

of Aragon. 

1102-1106* 

I J 

peoao 11 

nc)6"-iai3 



Kin j op Naples" 

JAM6S~I MANFRED 

" thi Conau&ror* t tllantinubil 



PeDGOIII = CONSTANCC 
King of Araaon iqj-o-iq&j 
Kino: of ifictlu 1282 - t-iSx 



AbFONSO III 
latSj-MQi 



JAMes- 11 
1391-132? 

ALFONSO IV 

PeDKOIV 
•33? M 3 s r 



JOHUl = cLfcAN01i. 
ofCastll,: I 



JOHN. I 



HeN-RY lit 

of Castile 



MARTIN I 

l 395" 4 10 



FERDINAND I 
choffen King of Aragon) 

ij.is.-u.i6 
ILL. 



ALFONSO V 

of Aragon i-iio-i^ko 1 

of Maples- 1435-1458 

' I 
FcRRANuf I 

King of Napler 

itllcgitlmaU) 

d .-49-i: 



I 

-JOHN. II 
of Aragon 

FeRDlNAND = ISABt'b 
tK« Catholic of Castile 



I 

AbFONSOlI 

I 

FeRDlNAND II 



FAoniQue 

(.deposed itoil 



Thg HQUS'e of 

7VEAGON IN 

£PAIN L/ SL — 

— JVAPiej 



3 82 



5ANCH0 III 
of Castile 



8 



ALFONSO VIE" the Cool" 

Hg8|-I2U 



LOUIS VIII ^BLANCHf 
of France J 

5T LOUIS- 



BfiRtNGAEIA : 



_ 1 

FSEDINAND II 

of Leon 

ALFONSO IX. 

n85~i2QO 



FERDINAND 111 
King of Castile 1217-1252. 
K.tno of Castile <&. Leon 1230^1252, 



ALFONSO 2C "the Learned" 
.252-1281 

SANCHOIV 

1284-125)5 

FERDINAND IV 

ALFONSOX.I 



€b€A'NOR,= eDLUAED I 
of Eholani. 



H£NEY II 
(of Trastamara) 

JOHN I =j= eLeANOE 
, 3r9~ I 39° °f Aragon 



PtDRO 
' the Cruel" 



l 5b°:¥d 

C0NS5ANC6= C J0HN of Gaunt 



HCNEY III 



JOHN II 

\±0S- XAXi. 



F€RDINAND I 
(elected King of Araqon) 
i^i' 



ed Kino of Areuro 
1412 - 1410 



JOHN 11 
of Ara<ror 



ALFONSO V 
of Arasion '& Napier 



H£NRYIV 



1 

ISABEL = F6EDINAND 

of Castile of Araoon 



Jhg House of (AS'rtie,®-' Jgon 



383 



IDtbFlV 



tMpenoKHercRYiii 

(Saltan bine) 

I 

HCN.RY IV 
€mpcron ioko-uoG" 



IDfliFV 



r 



Hfc-MUY HCRRYV 
" the Blackl' fmperor no<?- ii2X 



r 



hcnry judi5h== FReoemcK. 

"the Proud" I of" Suabia 



of Hohenstaufen. 

— 1 

CONRAD III 
finperor iitS~iK2, 



HeMCY=mA5ILDA FReD£RICK_I 



" the Lion" 
of Saxcnu 



ofCnaland "Barbarowa" 

Cmperor n>:2~iigo 



OTTO IV 



HCNRY VI == CONSTANCe 



~ 1 

PHILIP 
Crnperor iigS-iai8 Cmperorjic)o~ii<yl Heires-? of Sicily of Suabia 

I '■Si, Raples" 6mperor iio8»I2oS 



FRfDeRICIC II 
Cmperor i2i£»i2xo 



HCNRY 
Kina of the Romans- 



CONRAD IV 
CONRADINd.wog 



MAKFRCD 



CONSTANCc = VeiXK HI of Aragon. 

Ike GueiF§ Si GHiBei^iNe^ 



JOHN "the Good" 
Kina of Prance i«o~i:a5i 

philip " the Bold" = mauGARee 

Duke, of Burmmdu Heiress of 

d. 1.10 a Duchu of IJrabant- 

JOHN"theFearte?j" 
murdered uio. 
I 



HOUSC OF HABSBURG 
RUDOLF I Cmperor 12^3-120,1 

ALBCHSr 
1208 ~ 1x08 



10 



—1 

JOHH=-ANHC PHlLIP"theGbod" 
Duke of ^•4°?' 

Bedford I 

CHARLeS "the Rash" 



RUDOLF bCOPOLD 

King of "Bohemia d.1320- 

d., 3 o r 



AbBeRS 
<*'35 fi 
bCOPOLDd.^So 

I * 

cRNfSTd.1424 



d.u 



-;rr 



FRCDCRICO! 
King of the Romans- 

'•HV493 



iRARY = She emperor fflAXIlRILIAN.! 
Heiresf of Bunqyndu \<i.q-i~iya 



THGDUKgS 9f Jfo&GUNDY &JfoU$e QjJ-fABSBURG 



3 »4 



She Cmperor H£NKV VII 

JOHN. 
Kina of Bohemia 

I 

She emperor CHAKbeS IV 



II 



CAR.013eRo 
K-iniT of Hunaaru 



bQUlS 
" the Great" 



U)eiMZeb SI<jISimiND=MAKY 

King of Bohemia i^jS-i^iej Kiner of Hungary 
£mperor rj^S-uoo tfmperor i.iio~ 143^ 



Jue j-foii^e qf luxeMgu^G 



A-MDReiD=JOAN.HAI 

of Naples 

"""I 
HCDlUia =JAo€bbO 

of Lithuania 

(LADISLASVofPolani 



johk CANSACazenOb* 
'MT~ '354 

HfLCNA = 



micHAebvm 

1200-1282. 

I 

ANDRONICUS'II 

128a- 
dethroned 1328, died 1532 

! 

imcHAeMX. 

(Joint Cmperor a>ith hisjather") 
died 1*20 

I 

ANDRpNICUS HI 

, 3 28 r , 54' 
JOHKV 

1 . 

(DANIUWI 



I£ 



JOHMVI 
1495-1448 



COMSTANTlNe XI 



1448—1453 



3H6j>AIgpIQGI 



INDEX 



A 



Aachen, 93, 99, 102, 188. 

Abelard, Peter, 208, 209, 211, 347, 

349> 354- 
Abu Bakr, 68, 74. 
Abu Talib, 67, 69, 70. 
Adrianople, 38, 332. 
Agincourt, 250. 
Alaric, 40, 41, 45. 
Albert I, 278, 279. 

Albigenses, the, 213, 214, 216, 217, 266. 
Alboin, 51. 
Alcuin, 82, 97, 99. 
Aldine Press, 350. 
Alessandria, 179. 
Alexander II, Pope, 137. 
Alexander III, Pope, 179. 
Alexander VI, Pope, 361. 
Alexius Commenus, 143 et seq. 
Alfonso V of Aragon, 315, 361. 
Alfonso VIII. of Castile, 265, 266. 
Alfonso X of Castile, 267, 271. 
Alfred the Great, 105, 106, 107, 131. 
Almohades, the, 265, 266. 
Alsace, 276, 281, 282. 
Ambrose, St., 33, 42. 
Amerigo Vespucci, 345. 
Anagni, 231. 

Andrew of Hungary, 293, 313. 
Andronicus II, 330. 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 105, 113. 
Anjou, Charles of, 229, 230, 312. 
— , second House of, 314, 361. 
Anno, Archbishop, 138. 
Anselm, Archbishop, 142. 
Antioch, 149. 

Aquinas, Thomas, 209, 355. 
Arcadius, the Emperor, 39. 
Aristotle, 208, 210, 261, 355. 
Arius, 30, 31. 
Armagnac, 250, 251. 
Arnold of Brescia, 211, 212, 326, 347. 
Artevelde, Jacob van, 237, 239. 
Assize of Clarendon, 163. 
Athanaric, 39, 143. 



Athaulf, 54. 

Athelney, 106. 

Athens, Duchy of, 329, 330. 

Attila, 44, 45, 145. 

Augustine, St., of Canterbury, 52. 

Augustine, St., of Hippo, 42, 43, 97, 

197, 208, 210, 349, 355. 
Augustulus, the Emperor, 46, 363. 
Augustus, the Emperor, 2, 4, 6, 9, 20, 

98. 
Averroes, 261. 
Avignon, 232, 316, 317, 318, 321, 322, 

3 2 3, 356. 

B 

Babylonish Captivity, 232, 316, 322. 

Bacon, Roger, 207, 349. 

Badr, battle of, 71. 

Bagdad, 87, 146, 151. 

Balearic Islands, 268. 

Barcelona, 266, 268, 337. 

Basil, St., 32. 

Bavaria, Duchy of, 89, 91, 133. 

Becket, Thomas, 160, 163-5, 202 > 2I 5> 

Bedford, John, Duke of, 253, 257. 

Belisarius, 50. 

Benedict, St., 125. 

Benedict IX, Pope, 135. 

Benedictines, the, 126, 222. 

Berengaria of Navarre, 156. 

Bernard, King of Italy, 101. 

Bernard, St., 126, 128, 129, 152, 153, 

J 54> 2 °9> 2I2 > 2I 4, 2I 9> 347- 
Black Death, the, 240, 241, 242. 
Blanche of Castile, 217, 223. 
Boccaccio, 241, 356. 
Boethius, 48, 107. 
Bohemia, 277, 317. 
Bohemund, 145, 149. 
Bologna, University of, 178, 201, 208. 
Boniface, St., 88, 89, 98. 
Boniface VIII, Pope, 230, 231, 311. 
Bouvines, battle of, 169, 187. 
Brandenburg, 131, 151. 
Breisgau, 281. 
Bretigni, Treaty of, 246. 



c c 



3 86 



Index 



Burgos, 264. 

Burgundians, the, 55, 59. 

Burgundy, Charles, Duke of, 280 et 

seq. 
Burgundy, John, Duke of, 250, 252. 
— , Philip, Duke of, 252, 256, 257. 



Calais, 240, 248, 249, 257. 

Canon Law, 202. 

Canossa, 140, 141, 176, 183. 

Cantacuzenos, John, 331. 

Cape of Good Hope, 341. 

Capet, Hugh, 109. 

Capet, Odo, 109. 

Capitularies, the, 96. 

Carinthia, 277. 

Carniola, 277. 

Carthage, 45, 77, 228. * 

Carthusians, the, 127, 128. 

Castile, 269, 270. 

Catalan Company, the, 330. 

Catherine, St., of Siena, 320 et seq. 

Catherine of Valois, 251. 

Caxton, William, 350. 

Celestine V, Pope, 310. 

Chalons, battle of, 44, 54. 

Chambre des Comptes, 233. 

Chanson de Roland, 80, 81, 82. 

Charlemagne, 78 et seq : 101, 104, 

107, 109, 142, 170, 200, 291, 349, 353. 
Charles ' Martel ', 62, 78, 88, 98. 
Charles 'the Bald', 102, 103, 109. 
Charles 'the Fat', 103. 
Charles 'the Simple', no. 
Charles V of France, 245, 247, 248, 249. 
Charles VI of France, 250. 
Charles VII of France, 251, 252, 254, 

256, 257, 258. 
Charles VIII of France, 361, 362, 363. 
Charles of Durazzo, 314. 
Charles IV, the Emperor, 289, 293, 

294 et seq., 324, 333, 346. 
Chioggia, battle of, 306. 
Chloderic, 58. 
Chosroes, King, 73, 74. 
Cid, the, 263 et seq. 
Cimabue, 357. 
Cistercians, the, 128, 215. 
Civitas Dei, the, 43, 97, 222, 311. 
Civitate, battle of, 115. 
Clement V, Pope, 232. 
Clement VII, Pope, 323. 
Clericis Laicos. the Bull, 230. 



Clermont, Council of, 147, 148. 

Clovis, 57 et seq. 

Cluni, 127, 133, 135. 

Cnut, King, to8, 287. 

Colonna, Stephen, 318. 

Columbus, Christopher, 342 et seq., 

349, 358, 360. 
Comitatus, the, 16, 119. 
Commines, Philip de, 280, 351, 362. 
Commune, the French, 173, 284. 
— , the Italian, 176, 177, 178, 180,284. 
Compostella, 265. 
Condoitieri, the, 301. 
Conrad I, 131. 
Conrad III, 152. 

Conrad (son of Frederick II), 192. 
Conradin, 194, 229, 269, 312. 
Conseil du Roi, 233. 
Consolations of Philosophy , the, 48, 107. 
Constance of Naples, 181, 182, 183, 
Constance, Perpetual Peace of, 180. 
— , Council of, 324, 325, 326. 
Constans II, Emperor, 75. 
Constantine 'the Great', 27 et seq., 

34 et seq. 
Constantine ' Pogonatus ', 75. 
Constantine XI, 334 et seq. 
Constantinople,^ et seq., 40, 49, 74, 

86, 87, 143, 306, 327, 328, 329, 335, 

33 6 , 338, 363- 
— , Latin Empire of, 184, 329. 
Constitutions of Clarendon, 164. 
Cordova, Caliphate of, 260 et seq. 
Corpus Juris Civilis, the, 49. 
Cortenuova, battle of, 193. 
Council of Ten, 304. 
Courtrai, battle of, 234 
Creci, battle of, 239, 240. 
Crema, 178, 179. 
Crusade, the First, 147-50. 
— , the Second, 129, 152, 158. 
— , the Third, 154-8. 
— , the Fourth, 184, 306. 
— , the Seventh, 226-7. 
— , the Children's, 226. 
Curia, the. 13, 14. 
Curia Regis, the, 162. 
Curiales, the, 13, 14, 19, 117. 
Cyprus, 156. 226. 

D 

Dagobert, King, 60. 
Danegeld, 108. 
Danelaw, the, 106. 
Dante, 294, 309 et seq., 356. 



Ind 



ex 



387 



Danzig, 285, 292. 
Decameron, the, 241. 
Decretum, the, 202, 209. 
Denmark, 108, 287. 
Diaz, Bartholomew, 340. 
Didier, King, 82-4. 
Divina Commedia, 199, 311, 356. 
Domesday Book, 113. 
Dominic, St., 215, 216, 219. 
Donation of Constantine, 85. 
Du Guesclin, 247, 272. 
Duns Scotus, 355. 



Eccelin de Romano, 192, 

Edessa, 150, 152. 

Edward 'the Confessor', 111. 

Edward 'the Elder', 106. 

Edward I, 228, 230, 234, 235, 247. 

Edward II, 236. 

Edward III, 236, 237, 242, 246, 247, 

317. 
Edward ' the Black Prince ', 242, 247, 

248. 
Eginhard, 90, 98. 

Eleanor of Aquitaine, 152, 159, 166. 
Epicurus, 22. 
Erasmus, 351. 
Ethelred, 'the Rede-less', 107, 108, 

109, in, 286. 



Faust, Legend of, 350. 

Ferdinand I of Aragon, 273. 

Ferdinand II of Aragon, 274, 343, 345. 

Ferrante of Naples, 361. 

Feudalism, 117 et seq. 

Flanders, 234, 237, 238, 250, 305, 345. 

Florence, 290, 297, 302, 303, 307, 308 

et seq., 348, 352, 360, 361. 
Francis, St., of Assisi, 217 et seq., 357. 
Franks, the, 55 et seq., 83. 
Frederick I, ' Barbarossa', 154, 178 et 

seq., 191, 202, 296. 
Frederick II, 183, 185, 186 et seq., 

203, 210, 224, 226, 276, 296, 308, 315. 
Friars, the, 216, 220, 221. 
Froissart, 239, 243, 244. 



Genoa, 145, 187, 284, 305, 306, 307, 

3 2 9, 337, 338. 
Genseric, 43, 45. 
Gertnania, the, 15-17. 



Gessler, 278, 279. 

Ghibellines, the, 176, 178, 179, 193. 

194, 206, 229, 294, 296. 
Giotto, 357, 358. 

Gloucester, Humphrey, Duke of, 253. 
Godfrey de Bouillon, 149, 150. 
Godwin, House of, in. 
Golden Bull, the, 295. 
Goths, the, 31, 104. 
Granada, 274. 

Grand Council, Venetian, 304. 
Granson, battle of, 282. 
Gratian, 202. 
Greenland, 105. 
Gregory, St., 32. 
Gregory, St., of Tours, 59. 
Gregory I, ' the Great ', Pope, 52, 53, 

107. 
Gregory VII, Pope ^Hildebrand), in, 

XI 5, x 3 6 et seq., 147, 177, 183, 202, 

229. 
Gregory IX, Pope, 190, 191, 193,216. 
Gregory XI, Pope, 321, 322. 
Grosstete, Bishop, 205. 
Guadalete, battle of, 62, 259. 
Guelfs, the, 176, 178, 179, 185, 193, 

194, 206, 229, 296, 308. 
Guienne, Duchy of, 225, 235, 236, 242, 

246, 248, 258. 
Guiscard, Robert, 116, 141, 145. 
Guthrum, King, 106. 
Gutenburg, John, 363, 350. 
Guy de Lusignan, 153. 



H 



Hako, King, 206. 
Hansa, the, 285 et seq., 348. 
Harold 'the Saxon', in, 144. 
Haroun al-Raschid, 87, 146. 
Hattin, battle of, 153. 
Hauteville, House of, 115, 116. 
Hawkwood, Sir John, 302, 321, 362. 
Henry II of Castile, 247, 271, 272. 
Henry IV of Castile, 273. 
Henry I of England, 142, 160. 
Henry II of England, 159 et seq., 181, 

202, 215, 270. 
Henry III of England, 204, 205, 221, 

225. 
Henry IV of England, 249. 
Henry V ol England, 249, 250, 251, 

252. 
Henry VI of England, 258. 
Henry VII of England, 343. 



3 88 



Index 



Henry 'the Fowler', 120, 131, 132. 
Henry III, the Emperor, 135, 137. 
Henry IV, the Emperor, 138 et seq., 

176, 177. 
Henry VI, the Emperor, 156, 168, 181, 

182, 183, 185, 191. 
Henry VII, the Emperor, 294, 311,, 

3 I2 > 3 J 9- 
Henry 'the Lion', 178, 179, 181. 
Henry 'the Navigator', 339, 340. 
Heraclius, the Emperor, 73, 75. 
Hijrah, the, 69. 

Hildebrand. See Gregory VII. 
Hohenstaufen, the, 176, 177, 183, 185, 

188, 191, 192, 194, 269, 312, 317. 
Holy Roman Empire, the, 134, 185, 

194, 285. 
Holy Roman Republic, the, 318, 320. 
Honorius, the Emperor, 39, 40, 41, 54. 
Honorius III, Pope, 189, 190. 
Hospitallers. Sf^John, Knights of St. 
Hundred Years' War, 236 et seq., 287, 

316, 324. 
Hungarians, the, 132. 
Huns, the, 37, 44, 104. 
Huss, John, 324, 325, 326. 
Hussite Wars, the, 326. 



I 



Iceland, 105. 

Ingeborg, Queen, 170, 171, 184. 

Innocent III, Pope, 168, 170, 171, 183 

et seq., 187, 188, 214, 216, 221, 226, 

265, 266, 317, 346. 
Innocent IV, Pope, 193, 204, 205, 224, 

3i7- 
Interregnum, the Great, 229, 271, 284. 
Investiture Question, the, 138 et seq. 
Irene, the Empress, 86. 
Irminsul, the, 88, 90. 
Isabel I of Castile, 274, 343, 345. 
Isabel, Queen of England, 236. 



Jacquerie, the, 244. 

Jagello of Lithuania. See Ladislas V. 

James 'the Conqueror', 266-8. 

Janissaries, the, 332, 336. 

Jeanne d'Arc, 253 et seq., 320. 

Jerome, St., 33, 41, 208. 

Jerusalem, 75, 114, 147, 150, 153, 157, 

190. 
— , Latin Kingdom of, 151, 153. 



Joanna I of Naples, 293, 313, 314, 333. 

Joanna II of Naples, 315. 

John II of Castile, 273. 

John V, the Emperor, 331, 335. 

John II of France, 243. 

John, King of England, 167, 168, 169, 

170. 
John I of Portugal, 339. 
John Ducas, 327. 
John Hunyadi, 336. 
John, Knights of St., 150, 153, 232, 

265. 
John of Gaunt, 248, 249, 339. 
Joinville, 226. 
Julian, Count, 77. 
Justinian I, 49 et seq., 178. 
Justinian II, 76. 

K 

Ka'bah, the, 66, 67, 72. 
Kalmar, Union of, 290. 
Khubla Khan, 337. 
Koran, the, 68. 
Kossovo, battle of, 333, 334. 



Ladislas of Naples, 315. 

Ladislas V of Poland, 292. 

Lateran Council, Fourth, 188. 

Lazar of Serbia. 333. 

Legnano, battle of, 179, 235, 296. 

Leo ' the Isaurian ', 77, 144. 

Leo I. Pope, 45. 52. 

Leo III, Pope, 85, 86, 97. 

Leo IX, Pope. 115, 135, 136. 

Leonardo da Vinci, 357 et seq. 

Leopold, the Archduke, 156, 167. 

Leopold, Duke, 279, 280. 

Lex Visigothoriim, the, 78. 

Limoges, 255. 

Lombard League, the, 179, 192, 193, 

202. 
Lombards, the, 50 et seq., 75, 82, 85. 
Lothair, Count, 133. 
Lothar, Emperor, 102, 103. 
Lotharingia, 103, 133. 
Louis ' the German ', 103. 
Louis ' the Good for Nothing ', 109. 
Louis ' the Pious ', 101. 
Louis III of Anjou, 315. 
Louis VII of France, 152, 159, 165, 166. 
Louis VIII of France, 217, 223, 250. 
Louis IX of France, 172, 217 223 et 

seq., 233, 312. 



Index 



389 



Louis XI of France, 258, 274, 281, 302, 

361. 
Louis XII of France, 300. 
Louis ' the Great ' (of Hungary,) 291, 

293 et seq., 313, 314, 324, 332, 333. 
Lubeck, 285. 286, 293. 
Ludovico ' II Moro', 351, 359, 360 et 

seq. 
Luna, Alvaro de, 273. 

M 

Machiavelli, 308, 354, 362, 

Madeira, 340. 

Magna Charta, 158, 168. 

Magnum Concilium, 162. 

Mahomet, 66 et seq. 

Mainz, 89. 

Mandeville, Sir John, 338. 

Maniaces, 115. 

Marcel, Etienne, 245. 

Margaret of Denmark, 290. 

Martin V, Pope, 326. 

Matthew Paris, 205. 

Maxentius, Emperor, 27. 

Mayfield. the, 83. 

Mayor of the Palace, the, 56, 61. 

Mecca, 67. 

Medici, Cosimo de, 352, 353, 354. 

Medici, Lorenzo de. 354, 356, 358, 360. 

Medici, Piero de, 360, 361. 

Medinah, 70. 

Mercia, ic6. 

Merovingians, the, 55, 60, 62, 64, 95, 

103, 109. 
Milan, 297, 298 et seq.. 303, 308, 315, 

35i, 352. 
— , Edict of, 29. 
Minnesingers, the, 200. 
Missi, the, 95. 96, 97, 107, 121. 
Mohammed II, 334. 336, 338. 
Monasticism, 31, 123 et seq , 348. 
Montereau," bridge of, 251. 
Morat, battle of, 283. 
Morgarten, battle of, 280. 
Morkere, House of, 111. 
Murcia, 267, 268. 

N 

Narses, 50, 51. 

Nanci, battle of, 283. 

Naples, 297, 303, 312 et seq., 352, 357, 

361. 
Navarette, battle of, 247. 
Navarre, 266. 



Navarre, ' Charles the Bad ' of, 245. 

Navas de Tolosa, battle of, 265. 

Nero, Emperor, 9, 25. 

Nicholas I, Pope, 144. 

Nicholas II, Pope, 115, 136. 

Nicholas V, Pope, 352. 

Nineveh, battle of, 74. 

Nogaret, 231. 

Normandy, Duchy of, 108, no, 169. 

Northmen, the, 104 et seq., 109, 114. 

Norway, 108. 

O 

Odo of Bayeux, 113, 149. 

Odoacer, 46, 47. 

Orkhan, Sultan, 331, 332. 

Orleans, 256. 

Ostrogoths, the, 46, 47. 

Othman, Caliph, 75. 

Otto I, the Great, 132 et seq., 142. 

Otto IV, 169. 185, 186, 187, 188, 193. 

Ottocar of Bohemia, 277, 278. 



Paleologus, Michael, 306, 327, 328, 

329. 330, 33 1- 
Paris, 174, 201, 208. 
— , University of, 257. 
Parlamento, the, 309. 
Parlement de Paris, 233. 
Pavia, 82, 84, 85. 

Pedro ' the Cruel ', 247, 248, 271, 272. 
Pedro II of Aragon, 266. 
Pedro III of Aragon, 268, 269. 
Pepin 'the Short', 63 et seq., 79, 86. 
Perpetual League, the, 277. 
Peter III of Aragon, 230. 
Peter ' the Hermit ', 147, 154. 
Peter Lombard. 209, 211. 
Petrarch, 356. 
Philip II 'Augustus', 154, 156, 165, 

168 et seq., 181, 184, 185, 197, 201, 

217, 223, 224. 
Philip III of France, 228. 
Philip IV of France, 228, 230, 232 et 

seq., 236. 
Philip V of France, 236. 
Philip VI of France, 237, 239. 
Philip II, the Emperor, 185, 186. 
Pisa, 145, 290, 300, 337. 
Pisani, 306. 

Platonic Academy, the, 354, 356. 
Poitiers, 62, 243. 
Poland, 291. 



Index 



39° 

Polo, Marco, 337, 338- 
Portugal, 266, 339, 343- 
Praetorian Guard, the, 18. 
Praguerie, the, 258. 
Provence, 268, 314, 316, 317. 

R 

Ravenna, 93, 95, 3 12 - 

Ravenna, Exarchate of, 51, 53, 64, 75, 

115, 144. 
Raymond VI, 213, 215. 
Raymond VII, 217. 
Remi, St., 57. 

Renaissance, the, 346 et seq. 
Rhodes, 232. 
Richard I, 154-8, 167. 
Richard II, 238, 249. 
Rienzi, Cola di, 318, 320, 356. 
Robert of Naples, 312, 357. 
Robert of Normandy, 114, 149. 
Roderic, King, 62, 259. 
Roger II, 116. 
Roger de Flor, 330. 
Rollo of Normandy, no. 
Rome, 41 46, 290, 303, 316 et seq., 

35 2 - 
Roncesvalles, 81. 
Rudolf I, 229, 276, 277, 295. 



Sacred Months, the, 66, 123. 
Saladin, 153 et seq. 
Salic Law, the, 56, 96, 236. 
Salisbury, Gemot of, 121. 
San Germano, Treaty of, 191. 
Santa Hermandad, 274. 
Santiago, Order of, 265. 
Saxons, the, 88 et seq., 130. 
Scala, Mastino della, 307. 
Schism, the Great, 323. 
Scholasticism, 209, 355. 
Scutage, 162. 
Senlac, battle of, 112. 
Sententiae, the. 209. 
Serbia, 293, 332, 333, 334. 
Sforza, Francesco, 351. 
Sforza, Galeazzo Maria, 351. 
Sforza, Gian Galeazzo, 361. 
Sicilian Vespers, the, 229, 269, 330. 
Siena, 320. 

Siete Partidas, the, 271. 
Sigismund, the Emperor, 294 s 324 et 
seq. 



Sigismund of the Tyrol, 281. 
Simon de Montfort, 215, 266. 
' Sluggard Kings ', the, 60. 
Sluys, battle of, 238. 
Spoletum, Duchy of, 83. 
Stamford Bridge, battle of, in. 
' Staple ' Towns, 237. 
States-General, 233. 
Stephen II, Pope, 64. 
Stephen Dushan, 332. 
Stephen of England, 122, 160. 
Stilicho, 39, 40. 
Stralsund, Treaty of, 289. 
Strasbourg, the Oath of, 103, 130. 
Styria, 277. 

Summa Theologiae, the, 210. 
Sutri, Synod of, 135. 
Swiss Cantons, the, 277, 279, 282 et 
seq., 296. 

T 

Tacitus, 4, 15, 17, 2 5, 54, IJ 9- 
Tancred of Sicily, 156, 182. 
Tannenberg, battle of, 292. 
Tell, William, 279. 

Templars, the, 151, 153, *9°> 2 3 2 > s6 5- 
Teutonic Knights, 151, 291 et seq. 
Theodora, the Empress, 49. 
Theodoric, King, 47, 48. 

Theodosius, the Emperor, 33, 39. 

Thorn, Treaty of, 292. 

Titus, the Emperor, n, 46. 

Toulouse, Counts of, 199, 212. 

Trajan, the Emperor, 25. 

Troubadours, the, 200. 

Troyes, Treaty of, 252. 

Truce of God, 123. 

Tunis, 227. 

Turks, the, 146 et seq., 331 et seq., 338. 

U 

Urban II, Pope, 145, 147. 
Urban VI, Pope, 322. 



Valdemar III, 287, 288, 289. 
Valencia, 261, 264. 
Valens, the Emperor, 37, 38. 
Valentian, the Emperor, 37. 
Vandals, the, 43, 5°, 77, i°4- 
Vasco da Gama, 341, 34 2 , 344, 3<53- 
Venice, 45, 95, J 45, J 5 8 , a8 4, 2 9Q, 



Index 



391 



293. 297, 300, 303 et seq., 329. 337, 

33 8 , 35°, 352. 
Verdun, the Partition of, 103. 
Vespasian, the Emperor, 9. 
Visconti, Bernabo, 299. 
Visconti, Filippo Maria, 302, 308, 315, 

35i- 

Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, 299, 300, 302. 

Visconti, Valentina, 300. 

Visigoths, the, 37, 40, 41, 54, 59, 77. 

W 

Waldensians, the, 213, 214, 219. 
Wedmore, Treaty of, 106. 
Wenzel, Emperor, 324. 
Wessex, 105, 106. 

William I of England, 111, 112 et seq., 
121, 137. 



William II of England, 114, 

Wisby, 288. 

Witikind, 90. 

Worms, Concordat of, 142. 

Wycliffe, 317, 324. 

X 
Ximenez, Rodrigo, 266. 



Yermuk, battle of, 75. 



Zeno, Emperor, 47. 
Zeno, philosopher, 22. 



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